Essay time.
I normally I do not partake in such discussions but something resembling a coherent line of thought appeared so I figured I would roll with it (this being said I doubt it will come across like that).
I am going to shy away from either condoning piracy or dismissing it. instead some arguments and theories I have heard or arrived at myself both for and against it and counterpoints to said arguments and theories which have left me deeply confused regarding any moral standpoint I could take, about as close I can get is piracy is OK for some reasons or more specifically does not do any damage to people maybe even raising their quality of life yet under other circumstances, what these standards can be will vary from person to person. I will however say for all that I have done unless it has resulted in physical injury I have never lost any sleep over anything I have done and as you may be able to infer that would place me at odds with quite a few people regarding this issue.
I would consider myself halfway between the utopian "vision" I can see in various blogs and anything the RIAA does not sanction or says is wrong should/will get me shot line I see touted by the RIAA and various idiot lawyers, stat makers and politicians they brainwash or pay off.
Despite having friends, colleagues I respect and services/products I like fall foul of such things I agree with patents and copyright assuming they are well implemented. Some computer games however seem to be subject to many year copyright which makes things difficult.
I will however say I oppose censorship which for the most part I can see being hand in hand with “copy protection” and by extension piracy. I realise I may have just lost much if not all of the potency for any argument I make for this view but I stand by it. I can not reasonably make an argument using just myself or my friends but what the hell:
I see no correlation between violent media and the effect on myself, I can see someone decapitated (for real or via makeup) and think wow and get the old blood flowing. I am not going to go and repeat it though, I knew I should not do it for no reason when I was 5 and I still know it is normally not reasonable to do it now. The ironic thing as far as I see it is that I am stronger, faster, better trained and possess a far greater amount of resources and knowledge to allow me to get away with it today.
A few things that make me sick though regarding piracy is people being harassed for chipping consoles: my bike goes fast enough as is yet a large stink would be kicked up of I were denied a part to make it go faster (for which the only purpose really is to break the law), wonder if “a chip is like a track day” line would hold up in court. That and region protection, I agree that companies/individuals have the right to earn assuming they can (dirt farming is not something I agree with) but region locking stuff is not on as far as I am concerned.
The other is second hand sales, I occasionally see debates about shops selling games second hand and how that hurts people I the industry, I can not help but laugh here and if I buy a game the chances are it will be second hand.
My personal uses aside I personally have taught and given explicit instructions on "piracy" (homebrew and legit (regardless what the law happens to say this minute) backups included) or improving the methods used to hundreds of people: of the 1000 odd posts I have on this site I imagine a good 70% of them are pertaining to problems with "piracy" actions. Add in all the real world instruction and the people they teach (who then often come and teach me something which is ever nice) and the documentation I write (OK that may be an exception but still). I have never taken money for my actions though as that does cross a line for me.
Regarding the entitled/deserving thing, I completely disagree with the “I am entitled” theory.
It does not justify piracy (for any sane reason I can think of), yes society is driven by money but
So to the jaded arguments section:
1)Downloading/renting/split purchasing a copy from somewhere and copying it for all to use is not the same as taping somebody’s window, elbowing it out and stealing their TV.
2) Piracy nets me a better copy than "legal" routes:
3) A pirate copy is not a sale lost
4) The faceless corporation argument
5) Regarding expense.
1)In the second scenario they are deprived of something and it will cost them to replace it where the first IE. piracy the owner/seller does not suffer.
2) True for the most part or you know where to look:
there is a reason I learned to hack roms, work with video and audio, build and operate computers, learned to program, learned to solder, learned electronics and engineering and there is a reason enjoy trainers, hacks, lack of adverts on my videos and videos I would not otherwise see (DVD regions here although games also apply), high quality FLAC audio including rare things vs the DRM laden 128kbit/s MP3 pop songs some legit places force on me, custom made parts for various items I use. Or simply that I can make a mix tape of all my favourite videos, music, games. However I have seen some damn awful pirate copies of DVDs, the sort of stuff I would have to work quite hard to replicate. Places like allofmp3 though as far as I can tell are legal and better than most pirate copies. I have not go too many counter arguments to this as it tends to fall under the piracy is wrong banner
3)this is kind of a catch-22 situation here as there is piracy and people know this so the availability of piracy equipment does facilitate sales yet I know numerous groups who would not buy a copy of a film (some "pirates" I have met only sell to struggling families on various estates which in my eyes is fantastic: the families would not be able to afford a £15 DVD or to take their kids to the cinema or the parent(s) go themselves every so often when their food budget for a week is barely double that, selling them a £2 DVD (at 100% profit no less) is almost an act of kindness). Sure there are various unpirated mediums (DIVX players, older arcade computer games and less popular formats).
Evolution favours the better of the bunch, in buisness terms this means if you cling to an outmoded buisness model you will fail:
imagine setting up a business installing asbestos for general use today: you would fail, 40 years ago you could make some decent money.
4) Sure I doubt anyone at EA will go hungry for me copying Generic football game 200X or MS will suffer from me downloading Vista (which at this point in time is something I would not waste my bandwidth on but that once again is a different arguement), I doubt many garage coders will care either. Due to part 3 though there is not really ever going to be any stats on the subject of sales lost. Assuming it is not 1984 and I am not being tracked/monitored (even then I have several methods by which to avoid detection) any programmer/rights owner
5)Regarding expense, back in high school people that worked had paper rounds: £20 a week if they were lucky and flawless in their actions. One (new) game £35, guess why the second hand games racks and to a lesser extent budget lines were drained on Friday at 4:30pm (or Saturday 10 mins after opening at the latest) and the select few who knew how to pirate were kept very busy (at least until I came along but that is a different story). Another part of this is also censorship but that does not apply for me anymore.
We do however live in a society based on money and just becuase I can not afford something (even if overpriced) it would be a hard sell to say that gives me the right to experience it.
Hmm I seem to have lost my train of thought so here is a good place to stop for now.
I normally I do not partake in such discussions but something resembling a coherent line of thought appeared so I figured I would roll with it (this being said I doubt it will come across like that).
I am going to shy away from either condoning piracy or dismissing it. instead some arguments and theories I have heard or arrived at myself both for and against it and counterpoints to said arguments and theories which have left me deeply confused regarding any moral standpoint I could take, about as close I can get is piracy is OK for some reasons or more specifically does not do any damage to people maybe even raising their quality of life yet under other circumstances, what these standards can be will vary from person to person. I will however say for all that I have done unless it has resulted in physical injury I have never lost any sleep over anything I have done and as you may be able to infer that would place me at odds with quite a few people regarding this issue.
I would consider myself halfway between the utopian "vision" I can see in various blogs and anything the RIAA does not sanction or says is wrong should/will get me shot line I see touted by the RIAA and various idiot lawyers, stat makers and politicians they brainwash or pay off.
Despite having friends, colleagues I respect and services/products I like fall foul of such things I agree with patents and copyright assuming they are well implemented. Some computer games however seem to be subject to many year copyright which makes things difficult.
I will however say I oppose censorship which for the most part I can see being hand in hand with “copy protection” and by extension piracy. I realise I may have just lost much if not all of the potency for any argument I make for this view but I stand by it. I can not reasonably make an argument using just myself or my friends but what the hell:
I see no correlation between violent media and the effect on myself, I can see someone decapitated (for real or via makeup) and think wow and get the old blood flowing. I am not going to go and repeat it though, I knew I should not do it for no reason when I was 5 and I still know it is normally not reasonable to do it now. The ironic thing as far as I see it is that I am stronger, faster, better trained and possess a far greater amount of resources and knowledge to allow me to get away with it today.
A few things that make me sick though regarding piracy is people being harassed for chipping consoles: my bike goes fast enough as is yet a large stink would be kicked up of I were denied a part to make it go faster (for which the only purpose really is to break the law), wonder if “a chip is like a track day” line would hold up in court. That and region protection, I agree that companies/individuals have the right to earn assuming they can (dirt farming is not something I agree with) but region locking stuff is not on as far as I am concerned.
The other is second hand sales, I occasionally see debates about shops selling games second hand and how that hurts people I the industry, I can not help but laugh here and if I buy a game the chances are it will be second hand.
My personal uses aside I personally have taught and given explicit instructions on "piracy" (homebrew and legit (regardless what the law happens to say this minute) backups included) or improving the methods used to hundreds of people: of the 1000 odd posts I have on this site I imagine a good 70% of them are pertaining to problems with "piracy" actions. Add in all the real world instruction and the people they teach (who then often come and teach me something which is ever nice) and the documentation I write (OK that may be an exception but still). I have never taken money for my actions though as that does cross a line for me.
Regarding the entitled/deserving thing, I completely disagree with the “I am entitled” theory.
It does not justify piracy (for any sane reason I can think of), yes society is driven by money but
So to the jaded arguments section:
1)Downloading/renting/split purchasing a copy from somewhere and copying it for all to use is not the same as taping somebody’s window, elbowing it out and stealing their TV.
2) Piracy nets me a better copy than "legal" routes:
3) A pirate copy is not a sale lost
4) The faceless corporation argument
5) Regarding expense.
1)In the second scenario they are deprived of something and it will cost them to replace it where the first IE. piracy the owner/seller does not suffer.
2) True for the most part or you know where to look:
there is a reason I learned to hack roms, work with video and audio, build and operate computers, learned to program, learned to solder, learned electronics and engineering and there is a reason enjoy trainers, hacks, lack of adverts on my videos and videos I would not otherwise see (DVD regions here although games also apply), high quality FLAC audio including rare things vs the DRM laden 128kbit/s MP3 pop songs some legit places force on me, custom made parts for various items I use. Or simply that I can make a mix tape of all my favourite videos, music, games. However I have seen some damn awful pirate copies of DVDs, the sort of stuff I would have to work quite hard to replicate. Places like allofmp3 though as far as I can tell are legal and better than most pirate copies. I have not go too many counter arguments to this as it tends to fall under the piracy is wrong banner
3)this is kind of a catch-22 situation here as there is piracy and people know this so the availability of piracy equipment does facilitate sales yet I know numerous groups who would not buy a copy of a film (some "pirates" I have met only sell to struggling families on various estates which in my eyes is fantastic: the families would not be able to afford a £15 DVD or to take their kids to the cinema or the parent(s) go themselves every so often when their food budget for a week is barely double that, selling them a £2 DVD (at 100% profit no less) is almost an act of kindness). Sure there are various unpirated mediums (DIVX players, older arcade computer games and less popular formats).
Evolution favours the better of the bunch, in buisness terms this means if you cling to an outmoded buisness model you will fail:
imagine setting up a business installing asbestos for general use today: you would fail, 40 years ago you could make some decent money.
4) Sure I doubt anyone at EA will go hungry for me copying Generic football game 200X or MS will suffer from me downloading Vista (which at this point in time is something I would not waste my bandwidth on but that once again is a different arguement), I doubt many garage coders will care either. Due to part 3 though there is not really ever going to be any stats on the subject of sales lost. Assuming it is not 1984 and I am not being tracked/monitored (even then I have several methods by which to avoid detection) any programmer/rights owner
5)Regarding expense, back in high school people that worked had paper rounds: £20 a week if they were lucky and flawless in their actions. One (new) game £35, guess why the second hand games racks and to a lesser extent budget lines were drained on Friday at 4:30pm (or Saturday 10 mins after opening at the latest) and the select few who knew how to pirate were kept very busy (at least until I came along but that is a different story). Another part of this is also censorship but that does not apply for me anymore.
We do however live in a society based on money and just becuase I can not afford something (even if overpriced) it would be a hard sell to say that gives me the right to experience it.
Hmm I seem to have lost my train of thought so here is a good place to stop for now.
