Software piracy; is it theft, does it harm the industry etc?

[veeeffarr]

[Liam_]

what do i do in the mean time? be fooled with the box covers and their Photoshopped screenshots, Magazine Mis-quotes e.g
"The best game of the year"
when the magazine really said
"This game had the potential to be the best game of the year but fell by the way after the intro sequence."
etc etc........
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I got a dig bick. You this read wrong. You read that wrong too.
Yamaha R1 2016

[veeeffarr]

The PC industry is slightly different though.

Games are cheaper.

If it's a console game you don't intend to play much, then you can legally rent them in this country.

[craigie b]

[craigie b]

And I've never heard any game dev company say 'we've went under becasue of piracy'. More often than not its because the game they made didn;t strike the right tone with the market place. Normally this is becasue the game is shit, but on occassions great games fail (like thief 3) and the compnay folds.

[veeeffarr]

Just a thought.

What are your opinions on people that go into Game stores/Supermarkets to open the boxes of serialed games up to acquire a key?

[Dom]

That's just being a pain. That game will probably end up having to back to the manufacturer as nobody's going to want to buy a box that's already been tampered with. If someone does buy one by accident and finds it doesn't work as the other bloke's already used the key then there's yet more annoyance.

Point is you then have a victim, although it's hardly the end of the world.

Like Craig says - if there were more good games & movies being released then profits would increase dramatically. No industry should expect sympathy for producing a crappy product. Piracy's a convenient excuse.
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Photos and that

[Liam_]

The shop shouldn't have been stupid enough to put the real games on the shelves, they should use the demostration boxes supplied with the real ones
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I got a dig bick. You this read wrong. You read that wrong too.
Yamaha R1 2016

[TheBoyChris]

[veeeffarr]

[veeeffarr]

Agree with Chris to be honest, I'm going to leave this thread too as I can't be arsed going over the same point over and over again with people who fail to see what they're doing is wrong.

[Liam_]

[byke95]

Iti is very unlikely that someone is going to go 'you're right, I've been stealing these goods which makes me a bad person' as it will go against their deep seeded self beliefs. People will always develop beliefs to justify their behaviour. This goes for every single person and every single behaviour behaviour, from download games and stealing cars to killing people.

So far there are three kinds of people on this thread:

Person 1: Average Joe who buys some media and downloads others (illegally). By the sounds of it this is most of BCF. Feel they are justified in doing this.

Person 2: Those who have a vested interest in the media (i.e employed by them). Toby is rightly fighting this corner as he believes in what he is saying.

Person 3: So far, just me. I don't really like consoles, prefer my music to have a crackle and a bounce and still like going to the cinema (despite the rip off prices).

[JonT]

It makes me laugh when people say I downloaded it because I couldn't afford it and thus wouldn't have bought it anyway. If you can't afford the game you shouldn't have the game!

It is wrong because you are stealing somebodies time, you are stealing a developers time. When you buy the game you are mostly paying for the time and cost it took to make it.

Imagine if you went to a garage to get your bike repaired, and then simply took your bike without paying the mechanic!

Now imagine if the work and cost was distributed like games are. Imagine if you and a bunch of your friends share a track bike, you all take the track bike to have some work done on it. You decide that because you don't have the money to pay your share of the cost you wouldn't have the work done, but seeing as the work is going to be done anyway you'll just use the bike without paying your share.

As a result everyone elses share of the cost goes up to compensate for you not paying.

[Dom]

I'm not presenting it as some kind of righteous crusade. All I ever disputed was the revenue issue, not the morality one. I'm sure it is 'wrong' but it definitely doesn't stop me from sleeping at night.

However I do maintain that I'm happy to pay if a game is good enough. So if the developers/movie producers fancy making some more cash out of me then there's an easy way of going about it.

[TheDonUK]

[Psychofly]

Copying games IS wrong whatever way you look at it but there is a huge difference between someone that tries a copied game once hates it and bins it and someone that downloads game after game spends hours playing them then downloads some more.
I admit I do play some copied games but like I said if it's a game I'm going to actually properly as opposed to just trying then I will buy it.
In the past year I've probably played a total of about 5 different games. Battlefield 2 (played demo loved it bought it) Half Life 2 (for CS:S online play) GTA San Andreas (played a copy loved it bought it) and Fahrenheit (played a copy, didn't like it, uninstalled and binned) and Doom 3 (played a copy, loved it, played a bit more, decided I hated it, uninstalled and binned).
Now I'm not saying I'm in the right but there is no way I would have bought any of those games except HL2 (because I loved CS 1.6 so was desparate to get CS:S) for £30-35 to see if I liked it and demos don't give a good indication of a game most times. If I hadn't played a copy I would never have bought a full genuine copy.
I know I'm wrong but I think I'm a hell of a lot more right than someone who has 100 copied games and refuses to part with any cash ever.
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[TheDonUK]

[JonT]

I agree that if you wouldn't of bought the game anyway then nobody loses out on money.

However doesn't the developer deserve to be paid for his work? To enjoy the fruits of someone elses labour without paying sounds wrong.

If someone paints an amazing peice of art and charges people to look at it then each individual is paying an ammount to enjoy the work done by that artist. Now if someone sneaks in to see it without paying the artist isn't losing any money, as that person wouldn't of gone if they had to pay.

The thing is though, should they get to enjoy the art if even for a few moments, even if they don't enjoy it that much at all, without giving anything back?

[TheDonUK]

[Bendy]

Make everything pay to play?

[G]

Chris:
I'm presuming your comments are aimed at me, so am replying as appropriate.
Though, of course, it's a waste of time as you're not coming back, I appreciate.

My comments were in regards to the usual figures which I hear from software companies which take an estimate of how many people have pirated their product, multiply that by the retail price, then present that as the figure of money they have 'lost' from pirating.
If you believe that to be the case, then I stand by your interpretation that I called you an idiot. If you do not believe that, then this is not the case.

To some degree I was actually agreeing with you - that the evidence that there is isn't at all reliable; it's just that when I've seen software companies making a big deal out of it, they've gone way over the top with their lack of evidence.

Have I told you that you are wrong for being pissed off? No. Infact, I'd quite agree with your stance of being pissed off when people openly admit to copying your work - to me that's just plain rude, if nothing else.

I'm not aware I've ever taken any of your work for free, so not sure how you have worked this out. Of course I may have, but it seems fairly unlikely as I can think of one game I have installed an illegal version of in the last five years or so - and that was GTA: SA, for the record I had previously bought GTA3 and not really played it that much, so didn't want to pay for SA.

I'm not sure I've even said that this isn't wrong, I've just said I believe it to be less wrong than physical theft - a statement I stand by.

I'm not trying to suggest you were blanketly 'wrong', however nor do I believe you were entirely correct. Also, as you mentioned your own dealings with such things, I suspect we are merely talking about shades of grey - just that some people do it more than you do.



Toby:
If you can aquire an exhaust from the local dealers by theft, but not actually leave them with anything less, then I can't see the dealer being able to prosecute you or do much at all, or probably be bothered in anyway....

"So, you say the defendant took this item from your shop, how did he do it with out you noticing?"
"Well, nothing is actually missing."
"So, what loss have you incurred?"
"Well, err, nothing actually, but, you never know, the defendant might have bought the item"

And, more to the point, from what we've seen you're just as bad as the rest of us - or worse, maybe, as you take it from non-salaried developers.
To me 'stealing' intellectual property from a small community development is much worse than stealing it from large corporations with many stock holders, large advertising budgets etc.

[TheDonUK]

[G]

On the whole games thing - when I play games, it's mostly on-line games - that's what I feel really distinquishes a game in long term playability. And as far as I'm aware, most companies have pretty much sorted the pirating of online games - as you have to have a legit keycode.
I'm happy to pay a wodge of money if I know that it's a game I may still be playing a year from now.

[Bendy]