Why do anti pirates come to a homebrew forum mostly used for piracy?

[Queno138]

Referencing to this: https://gbatemp.net/threads/piracy-common-myths.344858/

I bought the disc/cart/game, so I can do whatever I want with the software on it!
Sadly, false as well. In the majority of cases, what you have bought is a physical object containing the information and a license to use that single copy of the information, which is different from owning the object outright.

By such standards, Homebrew, which is running code not endorsed by the company that created the device, or to be retold as invalidating the terms of the license (above underlined),
hence it is technically illegal.

It may not be piracy (copyright infringement), but it does infringe on intellectual property, hence illegal.


So Homebrew and Piracy are both illegal.

In harsher terms (while trying to be not rude), people should get off their high horse and see the reality of the situation:
They are just justifying their actions, in the same manner pirates does.

 

[Arras]

Personally, I don't even mind pirates. The only thing I get really annoyed at is pirates who go full "Why would you ever pay for shit when you can get it for free? Paying is for losers hahaha". Like, if you're going to pirate, fine, go ahead, but at least recognize it's wrong to do so.

 

[Issac]

So Homebrew and Piracy are both illegal.

Sure, both's illegal. I find homebrew more justifiable than piracy though, with one simple argument: Homebrew doesn't hurt ANYONE, Piracy does. "If I didn't pirate it, I wouldn't have bought it anyway, so they didn't lose money on me" is a bullshit argument.
In my eyes, homebrewers can sit on their higher horses if they want. Pirates are assholes. I'm a Pirate. (But for the record, I buy a lot of stuff too, as much as I can afford. I want to support developers, musicians, etc).

 

[Queno138]

Sure, both's illegal. I find homebrew more justifiable than piracy though, with one simple argument: Homebrew doesn't hurt ANYONE, Piracy does. "If I didn't pirate it, I wouldn't have bought it anyway, so they didn't lose money on me" is a bullshit argument.
In my eyes, homebrewers can sit on their higher horses if they want. Pirates are assholes. I'm a Pirate. (But for the record, I buy a lot of stuff too, as much as I can afford. I want to support developers, musicians, etc).

If you referred back to the link, you just pointed out myth no.1:

Piracy is theft.
This is by far the most common myth. Piracy is not theft because it does not cause any direct damage or loss to the other party (in fact, whether there's another party at all is sometimes up for debate). Theft, on the other hand, is a criminal act because in committing an act of theft, you deprive somebody of something. If I go and take an old lady's purse, then due to my actions the old lady has been caused a loss, her purse. However, when pirating, nobody loses anything. The pirater gains a copy of some digital item, while the person/entity who originally created that item is completely unaffected by the act.

The legal term for theft is "larceny" and is under criminal law, while piracy is "Copyright Infringement", which is under civil law (except exceedingly-rare cases that edge into a felony). If downloading a song from the internet causes somebody's bank account to magically have money subtracted out of it or causes physical copies of the item in question to poof into thin air, I would love to know how that works.

That being said,

if one were to considered Piracy "emotionally hurting developers, as we didn't want our game to be stolen",
then homebrew is equivalent in the sense that it "emotionally hurts developers, as we didn't want our device to be misused with such functions. We wanted to stay region locked.
We wanted you to buy our VC games, rather than run emulators etc. etc."

I'm an asshole too ><,
but there are teams/people I genuinely support.

 

[DinohScene]

Temp used to be a place where ROMs where hosted.
Over the years, the ROMS where dispatched and the community stayed.

Temp is a place for homebrewers/hackers/pirates/gamers to gather.
Who cares if you pirate or not.

Only idiots and fools start flame wars.

 

[Issac]

If you referred back to the link, you just pointed out myth no.1:

Nope, I never said "Piracy is Theft". I hate it when people compare pirating with stealing.
Piracy IS a lost sale though, surely not all the time, but very often. It hurts someone, sometime. It hurts statistics, it hurts developers financially, and there's no reason to deny that.
Compare that to homebrew. Who does that hurt?

 

[Maikel Steneker]

Nope, I never said "Piracy is Theft". I hate it when people compare pirating with stealing.
Piracy IS a lost sale though, surely not all the time, but very often. It hurts someone, sometime. It hurts statistics, it hurts developers financially, and there's no reason to deny that.
Compare that to homebrew. Who does that hurt?

Playing devil's advocate: it can hurt console manufacturers, since they sell their console at a loss or with little profit hoping they can sell software on it. If people use it to run their own software, this business model falls apart. Emulators and homebrew ports (think unofficial ports of Doom or Quake) can take away sales from the real ports if they get released. I'm not saying they're strong arguments, but they exist.

At the same time, I would contest whether your point about piracy is necessarily true. I'm not denying the possibility of piracy having a (net) negative effect on developers. People that may have bought their product otherwise may end up not buying it because they can use it for free. At the same time, there may also be a positive effect of spreading word and people buying a game they like and want to support. The hard part is evaluating to what extent both of these factors affect sales and what that means for a developer or publisher.

 

[Issac]

Playing devil's advocate: it can hurt console manufacturers, since they sell their console at a loss or with little profit hoping they can sell software on it. If people use it to run their own software, this business model falls apart. Emulators and homebrew ports (think unofficial ports of Doom or Quake) can take away sales from the real ports if they get released. I'm not saying they're strong arguments, but they exist.

At the same time, I would contest whether your point about piracy is necessarily true. I'm not denying the possibility of piracy having a (net) negative effect on developers. People that may have bought their product otherwise may end up not buying it because they can use it for free. At the same time, there may also be a positive effect of spreading word and people buying a game they like and want to support. The hard part is evaluating to what extent both of these factors affect sales and what that means for a developer or publisher.

Well, if I buy a console and put it in a drawer, never touching it... it'd be the same. That's more a flaw in the business model rather than something homebrewers can be blamed for.
Emulators and homebrew ports = piracy. Some homebrew ports require official files from the original game discs to work, that makes it OK in my eyes.

Sure, piracy leads to sales too, I'm sure about that! I'm one of those who've bought stuff after pirating it because I realised I liked it.
Many does however pirate something while it's new and expensive, and later buys it at 80% sales, claiming they "support the devs". And let's face it, a LOT of people are cheap bastards, and pirate because it's free, a lot more people than those who buys the game, or spreads the word.

 

[VinsCool]

Temp used to be a place where ROMs where hosted.
Over the years, the ROMS where dispatched and the community stayed.

Temp is a place for homebrewers/hackers/pirates/gamers to gather.
Who cares if you pirate or not.

Only idiots and fools start flame wars.

Well said Dinoh! This should be the answer to OP.

 

[FAST6191]

By such standards, Homebrew, which is running code not endorsed by the company that created the device, or to be retold as invalidating the terms of the license (above underlined),
hence it is technically illegal.

That very much depends where you are in the world and what sort of protections you might have had to bypass to do it. Depending upon what goes you might invalidate an aspect of the warranty (though practically most would consider the whole thing gone for a lot of electronics) but illegal, or indeed in breach of enforceable contract is a step above all that.

Temp used to be a place where ROMs where hosted.
Over the years, the ROMS where dispatched and the community stayed.

Give or take the old efnet IRC stuff which was a separate thing from the forums the ROMs went very early on (early 2003 early) and that was less than 2 years since GBAtemp started and under a year since the forums proper became a thing.

 

[DinohScene]

Give or take the old efnet IRC stuff which was a separate thing from the forums the ROMs went very early on (early 2003 early) and that was less than 2 years since GBAtemp started and under a year since the forums proper became a thing.

Pretty much the founding members plus anyone who registered before Jan. '03 know about the ROMs then.
I, discovering Temp in.. I think '07 or something haven't signed up until '11.
Somehow I always refrain from registering to sites.

 

[Queno138]

Nope, I never said "Piracy is Theft". I hate it when people compare pirating with stealing.
Piracy IS a lost sale though, surely not all the time, but very often. It hurts someone, sometime. It hurts statistics, it hurts developers financially, and there's no reason to deny that.
Compare that to homebrew. Who does that hurt?

I was referring to the statement that piracy hurts someone.

The "piracy is theft" is the header of the myth ><

In any case, if piracy hurts the developers, so does home brew.

It works hand in hand.

 

[Issac]

In any case, if piracy hurts the developers, so does home brew.
It works hand in hand.

Let's agree to disagree then.

 

[Meteor7]

If piracy hurts the developers, so does home brew.

It works hand in hand.

I'm having trouble seeing that. What damage does homebrew do?

 

[Queno138]

I'm having trouble seeing that. What damage does homebrew do?

Emotional damage.

Like they don't want their system to be abused in a way they didn't endorsed.

Just like how piracy hurts them emotionally because they few there is lesser sales.

(I technically mentioned it a few posts back)

But in all seriousness.

It's both illegal.
It's just how you want to believe it is not.

Like how jaywalking is illegal, or downloading music is illegal, or unpaid video streaming, or outrage of modesty.

Unlicensed distribution and unlicensed modifications are simply different types of varying illegalities.

 

[Meteor7]

Emotional damage.

Like they don't want their system to be abused in a way they didn't endorsed.

Just like how piracy hurts them emotionally because they few there is lesser sales.

(I technically mentioned it a few posts back)

But in all seriousness.

It's both illegal.
It's just how you want to believe it is not.

Like how jaywalking is illegal, or downloading music is illegal, or unpaid video streaming, or outrage of modesty.

Unlicensed distribution and unlicensed modifications are simply different types of varying illegalities.

I know it's illegal, but that's not what I was arguing. For me at least, legal =/= moral, and I set my own limitations based on my personal values, which is something that I believe most people do as well. The "harm" that we were debating was in respect to how piracy affects the future of the games industry and not the potential hurt feelings of game companies/developers, though if that really were the case, I think it would be worth discussing as well. In any case, I don't think that it would hurt anyone's feelings to see their equipment utilized like this. Personally, I'd be thrilled to see a piece of hardware that I designed being expounded upon and taken in a new direction by an enthusiastic and creative community. I really can't put myself into any mindset that would see hacking of a console as abuse to the console, creator, or anyone, really. Are there any reasons you feel that way? Put another way, what evidence or logic have you come across that lead you to believe this?

 

[Armadillo]

A lot of homebrew tends to be emulators. And in the case of Nintendo systems, those emulators play games that are on the virtual console. So there's revenue lost via homebrew. Of course, that little issue is normally swept under the soapbox the anti-piracy people are preaching from.

 

[Queno138]

I know it's illegal, but that's not what I was arguing. For me at least, legal =/= moral, and I set my own limitations based on my personal values, which is something that I believe most people do as well. The "harm" that we were debating was in respect to how piracy affects the future of the games industry and not the potential hurt feelings of game companies/developers, though if that really were the case, I think it would be worth discussing as well. In any case, I don't think that it would hurt anyone's feelings to see their equipment utilized like this. Personally, I'd be thrilled to see a piece of hardware that I designed being expounded upon and taken in a new direction by an enthusiastic and creative community. I really can't put myself into any mindset that would see hacking of a console as abuse to the console, creator, or anyone, really. Are there any reasons you feel that way? Put another way, what evidence or logic have you come across that lead you to believe this?

Whether or not piracy harms the company is as theoretical as whether homebrew harms the console development team, cause both claims are equally unsubstantiated.

Except for the fact that I believe in the terms of use, they stated they don't want both.

(It's a belief; I didn't read the full terms of use)

 

[Meteor7]

Whether or not piracy harms the company is as theoretical as whether homebrew harms the console development team, cause both claims are equally unsubstantiated.

Except for the fact that I believe in the terms of use, they stated they don't want both.

(It's a belief; I didn't read the full terms of use)

But we know that piracy will financially hurt a company. There are instances of piracy, the fraction of which is speculative, which subtract from the sale of the software pirated, impacting a company's bottom line. We assume that this financial impact will negatively affect the future of the company, future game releases, user-friendliness of consoles, etc, but these assumptions seem to follow logic. It would make at least some sense to say that the less money a company has, the fewer resources its able to make use of, impacting, if only slightly, development of future games. It also follows that console designers will include more anti-piracy measures, making things like installing homebrew and hacking games, more difficult, in direct response to the pirating of software. It's subjective whether or not this things are "bad", but I think it's pretty safe to say that piracy does indeed have an impact on game companies, one that most who enjoy partaking in video games would likely find undesirable. I can't draw the same connections to homebrew, in fact, I think that things like mods, homebrew, and hacks actually add incentive to buy the systems and software rather than detract, 2 examples of which would be Skyrim and the PSP.

 

[pwsincd]

People who buy games used are far worse than pirates imo. But that's a whole other topic I wont get into.

So my kids are worse than pirates cause they save their tiny bits of cash here and there to buy pre owned games , when your saying they should be illegally downloading games and breaking laws . Is this a morally correct thing for me to teach them ? .