Piracy is absolutely justified IMO. It has nothing to do with sleeping at night as morally, I have no problem with software piracy that isn't for profit, and I say this as someone who used to work in the industry.
The Commodore Amiga was a success for many years. The reason for that was software piracy, no question. Even Commodore themselves admitted that. I knew a TON of Amiga users. Not one didn't pirate software. The argument that a pirated copy is a lost sale is absolute nonsense. So with the Amiga, thanks to piracy, you've got a much large userbase, simply down to piracy. Commercial titles logically would still sell the same percentage, so a larger userbase means more sales. Yes, it also means more piracy, but you've also got more users to buy your titles. As one goes up, so does the other.
I bought a DS for the homebrew. I have a 1 gig CF card mostly full of roms I never play. These days my DS is used as an e-book reader and a web browser with DSO.
The software industry treats us all like crap. (I'm more approaching this from the PC side of the industry.) If you go and buy some bread and it's mouldy, or even tastes weird, you can return it to the store and get your money back. You buy a bicycle, and ten minutes into using it the wheel falls off, you can take it back. There would be absolute uproar from consumers if you couldn't.
Yet we gleefully accept the software industry doing it. You pick up a game at your local WalMart, EBGames, whatever... You take it home and put it on your PC. The copy protection doesn't play nice with your system meaning you can't run it. You take it back to the store. But you can't return it, because you may have copied it, but the copy protection is the exact reason you can't.
What an absolutely great industry! They can churn out the absolute worst attrocity to ever be pressed onto disk, and they're laughing all the way, because you can't return it. If it doesn't work, you have no recourse. If it's crap, you have no recourse. If it does run, and is unplayably bugged, you have no recourse.
So piracy is completely acceptable IMO when the industry themselves engage in unfair business practices that wouldn't be tolerated from any other industry. Incessant claims of software piracy are made. "We lose 2 billion a year" and all that nonsense. "Every pirated copy is a lost sale." So working on that theory, given how many sales are supposedly lost to piracy according to the industry, that would, logically, make an unpirateable title the greatest selling of all time, if the industries statements were correct. Only it didn't quite work that way. Starforce protected titles were very hard to crack. Some titles, despite being 2-3 years old, have STILL not been cracked and pirated. (GT Legends springs to mind.) meaning if the would be pirate wanted it, they'd have to buy it. Now according to the industry, when someone pirates a title, they lose a sale. So all these little pirates should have run out and bought the titles should they not? Only they didn't. Sales were average, surprise surprise.
The industry crows on about piracy because they know they make a big enough noise, they can get attention with all their big scary numbers and push new, harsher legislation through that punishes software pirates with harsher fines and prison sentences than some rapists and murderers get. They know damn well that piracy also has positives. For years it was believed Lucasarts deliberately leaked their titles early to create buzz. Early release piracy creates buzz.
The industry treats users with utter contempt. Why should the users feel any obligation to the industry? And anyone who says "there'd be no industry", if piracy was the industry destroying cancer they'd have you believe, there wouldn't BE a game industry by this point. Even the PC gaming industry has been declared dead many times, and is still thriving.
The only pirates I have an issue with are the for profit folk. But the authorities don't go after them. No, much easier to go after soft targets they know they can win against because they can't afford decent legal representation. They get good press for busting a "hardened criminal". (Despite the fact that software piracy is NOT theft by legal definition, as you are not in sole posession of someone elses property. It's copyright violation. Ironically if it WAS theft, the legal penalities would be less.) The industry gets to wave it's dick around for all to see... And the resources that were used to catch this hardened software pirate weren't available to try and catch someone who was actually a threat to society rather than a companies bottom line.
Sorry to rant on, but I worked in the industry for many years, and all the claims about how damaging piracy are are absolute bollocks, and they know it.
Hadrian: Anyone who trusts game reviews is an idiot. I've seen what happens first hand when someone tells the truth. The bigger publications will lose ad revenue if they piss off the big companies, and the smaller publications simply stop getting the free product they depend on if a poor game is given an appropriate review.
The Commodore Amiga was a success for many years. The reason for that was software piracy, no question. Even Commodore themselves admitted that. I knew a TON of Amiga users. Not one didn't pirate software. The argument that a pirated copy is a lost sale is absolute nonsense. So with the Amiga, thanks to piracy, you've got a much large userbase, simply down to piracy. Commercial titles logically would still sell the same percentage, so a larger userbase means more sales. Yes, it also means more piracy, but you've also got more users to buy your titles. As one goes up, so does the other.
I bought a DS for the homebrew. I have a 1 gig CF card mostly full of roms I never play. These days my DS is used as an e-book reader and a web browser with DSO.
The software industry treats us all like crap. (I'm more approaching this from the PC side of the industry.) If you go and buy some bread and it's mouldy, or even tastes weird, you can return it to the store and get your money back. You buy a bicycle, and ten minutes into using it the wheel falls off, you can take it back. There would be absolute uproar from consumers if you couldn't.
Yet we gleefully accept the software industry doing it. You pick up a game at your local WalMart, EBGames, whatever... You take it home and put it on your PC. The copy protection doesn't play nice with your system meaning you can't run it. You take it back to the store. But you can't return it, because you may have copied it, but the copy protection is the exact reason you can't.
What an absolutely great industry! They can churn out the absolute worst attrocity to ever be pressed onto disk, and they're laughing all the way, because you can't return it. If it doesn't work, you have no recourse. If it's crap, you have no recourse. If it does run, and is unplayably bugged, you have no recourse.
So piracy is completely acceptable IMO when the industry themselves engage in unfair business practices that wouldn't be tolerated from any other industry. Incessant claims of software piracy are made. "We lose 2 billion a year" and all that nonsense. "Every pirated copy is a lost sale." So working on that theory, given how many sales are supposedly lost to piracy according to the industry, that would, logically, make an unpirateable title the greatest selling of all time, if the industries statements were correct. Only it didn't quite work that way. Starforce protected titles were very hard to crack. Some titles, despite being 2-3 years old, have STILL not been cracked and pirated. (GT Legends springs to mind.) meaning if the would be pirate wanted it, they'd have to buy it. Now according to the industry, when someone pirates a title, they lose a sale. So all these little pirates should have run out and bought the titles should they not? Only they didn't. Sales were average, surprise surprise.
The industry crows on about piracy because they know they make a big enough noise, they can get attention with all their big scary numbers and push new, harsher legislation through that punishes software pirates with harsher fines and prison sentences than some rapists and murderers get. They know damn well that piracy also has positives. For years it was believed Lucasarts deliberately leaked their titles early to create buzz. Early release piracy creates buzz.
The industry treats users with utter contempt. Why should the users feel any obligation to the industry? And anyone who says "there'd be no industry", if piracy was the industry destroying cancer they'd have you believe, there wouldn't BE a game industry by this point. Even the PC gaming industry has been declared dead many times, and is still thriving.
The only pirates I have an issue with are the for profit folk. But the authorities don't go after them. No, much easier to go after soft targets they know they can win against because they can't afford decent legal representation. They get good press for busting a "hardened criminal". (Despite the fact that software piracy is NOT theft by legal definition, as you are not in sole posession of someone elses property. It's copyright violation. Ironically if it WAS theft, the legal penalities would be less.) The industry gets to wave it's dick around for all to see... And the resources that were used to catch this hardened software pirate weren't available to try and catch someone who was actually a threat to society rather than a companies bottom line.
Sorry to rant on, but I worked in the industry for many years, and all the claims about how damaging piracy are are absolute bollocks, and they know it.
Hadrian: Anyone who trusts game reviews is an idiot. I've seen what happens first hand when someone tells the truth. The bigger publications will lose ad revenue if they piss off the big companies, and the smaller publications simply stop getting the free product they depend on if a poor game is given an appropriate review.
