This:
"In my opinion:
Piracy is OK is you can not buy original games (for example: you live in a place where's hard to get games, you don't have a credit card, etc).
Piracy is NOT OK if you can buy games without any difficulties and you still download games in an ilegal way."
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+1
Some day i will buy all the game i love (and steal) but for now i only can say I.O.U. and download a pirate copy.
Many games deseve our money another not.
The lack of demos lead many to first download a pirate copy and if the game is really good then buy it (as say in the readme from crackers groups).
The first time i play Borderlands and Fallout 3 was in pirate mode ;), then in a discount sales in steam i buy them.
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I agree in general. For instance, having no credit card does not mean it's fine to pirate. You should just ask your parents to buy the game for you, and if they don't then that's too bad.
In some cases though, it's somewhat reasonable. I have heard good things about Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru, for instance, but it has never been officially translated, so in order to play it legally one would have to learn Japanese, as opposed to just pirating a translated version. This doesn't necessarily justify breaking the law, but it is at least a reason for difficulties making piracy possibly semi-okay. A similar case exists with Mother 3.
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How would pirating the game help you with learning Japanese? What you need is a translation patch, and that could be applied to the purchased game.
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I meant pirating translated versions of games. How can you patch a gameboy game though, that seems like it would be complicated?
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OK, didn't know it's a game boy game. While technically you could legally buy the card, dump the ROM and apply the patch to it, it's a bit impractical.
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The legality of it is kind of a gray area but that would be the best course of action.
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Except this is totally false. It is never legal to download pirated copies of anything. It is only legal to make your own ROMs (or other files).
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what if your parents have no credit card and/or cant buy game for you?
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im a born pirate
yaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
We extort, we pilfer, we filch and sack.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
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No demo or always online DRM; piracy is fine to test the game imo.
I've pirated about 60% of my steam library before buying the game. You can test drive a car or try a sip of wine before buying, whats different with games?
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Here's a question to you: How many games have you pirated, completed, then not paid full price for ?
Because if you've done that even once, you aren't pirating to demo. You're just pirating and trying to justify yourself with this argument.
As for buying at a discount, discounts are a tradeoff between paying less and playing sooner. If you've pirated, you have chosen the playing sooner option. Which is the expensive option.
How do you define when you will stop playing your pirated copy and buy the full version ?
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The longest I've had a pirated copy of a game installed before buying or uninstalling is about 3 days. Play time no more than 3 hours; enough to tell if the thing is crippled with bugs or is playable and if its something that I would enjoy.
Many devs literally would never had got my money in a million years without the chance for me to pirate their games first.
The law is an ass. Copying IS NOT THEFT. What irks devs is they dont get money from the shit games they release, only the good ones. Think about it.... piracy actually encourages devs to make better games.
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He means it isn't theft as in, when you pirate something, the original is not lost. Theft is when you take something (like a disc copy) for free. The original, physical disc copy was lost, but on the internet, there is no packaging costs or anything, so nothing is being stolen, just duplicated.
The book example doesn't count, because you are making money off of the book. Copying the book word for word and keeping it (NOT selling it) isn't theft.
Sure, it is against the law, but it isn't theft, and the person who was distributing it isn't losing anything, just not gaining anything either.
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I pirated all of the games I have in my Library and Wishlist (except indie games , because it's a real shame to pirate an indie games) , if the game is good enough I'm buying it. That's all.
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That's not a reason to pirate. It states right there on the Steam Store page for Watch_Dogs that it requires a minimum of a DX11 compatible GPU with 1GB of VRAM.
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You would be surprised how many people don't even bother with that. I was looking at a game recently. It had listed NOT compatible, will NOT run on Intel HD Graphics chips for 2 years before it was even on Steam, it was in bold on Steam. People still gave it negative reviews and constantly complain they weren't informed.
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If your card doesn't support DX11 odds are you couldn't even run the game in the first place, did you check minimum requirements? You can find them easy.
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Super unfinished release/bad port/clearly not intended to be controlled through KBM but "supports" it? Pirate it. We've had them establish crappy DLC instead of large add-ons, day one, two, three patches instead of QA and we've seen the decline of actual demos in favor of rigged "gameplay previews" and faked "exclusive first look" reviews to boost sales in contrast to product quality.
I've bought games and movies I had acquired before, but in some cases, I couldn't even force myself to finish some of these and am glad I didn't buy them. I don't let some corp play me.
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Completely agree, especially since many new games do not get a demo release.
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+1.
I'm pretty much always torrenting the game first, playing a hour or 2 and then deleting the torrent again. After than I'm going make a decision to buy the game or not.
TBH, I also do it when there is a demo since HAWX. I bought HAWX 1 after playing the demo on the PS3 I tought this game would be awesome. Turns out all the thing that made the demo awesome was removed from the release.
PC demo link
I'm talking about:
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I've considered piracy, but its not as glamorous and fun as it sounds. It's hard work hoisting sails and swabbing decks.
And while having a wisecracking parrot on your shoulder does look cool, the reality is that you'll end up with a lot of bird shit running down your back.
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And let's not even get into the scurvy. Fuck the lack of oranges.
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If the price is low, the piracy would not exist. Paying 60€ for a game, I don't agree.
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Actually, most of the games from 20 years ago that are now considered classics were more than games now even before you talk about inflation. Name off any game for SNES or Genesis that are considered classics now, those games tended to cost around $80 when released and prices didn't drop quickly either. I definitely remember paying $80 for Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI (the version that was called III). I also remember Phantasy Star IV going for $100, though if you shopped around enough could find it for $80 (I traded in some games and got it for $60).
When you start accounting for inflation, games were atrociously expensive then. That's why you don't tend to see people who have been gaming since that era complaining about prices, because it's still less than we paid all those years ago for our games.
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Ya, and everyone pirated games back then as well. And 40 years ago Bill Gates would of been trading copies of pre-windows software.
They were really really expensive and piracy accounted for like 99% of installed copies. Because everyone with a computer in the area gave each other all the games they bought, every purchase provided dozens of people with the game (if not hundreds or thousands through BBSes). If you had a game or any software that is just what you did, you copied that floppy.
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I think a $60 price tag is reasonable for AAA games. The budget is extremely high and it really shows, at least in graphics most of the time.
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It's reasonable only because of shiny graphics? Graphics don't make a good game. And if game isn't good 60$ is not justified.
It's actually quite sad that a lot of AAA games this days with a HUGE budgets still aren't as half as good and fun as some of the 10$ indie games that were made by a handful of people in their garage.
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That may be subject to discussion, but what I don't see is why the prices keep climbing, plus, don't forget the second price tag for preorders, store exclusives, season passes and DLC ripped right out of the game instead of enhancing it while development has stalled. It's rehashes, it's PS3 graphics still, they're developing for five platforms now, adjusting to the lowest, not even optimizing or at least giving proper control schemes but they charge you the same amount as they do for a platform exclusive that runs smoothly and looks the best it can. I don't buy release day anymore. It's 4 weeks at least, mostly it's rather three months plus sale. They get what I want to give them, because value isn't expressed in price tags.
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I kinda agree with you, but even for a dollar a lot of people would download it for free, ie: Long ago I didn't have a credit card and as I live in a 3rd world country no one even family would give you a credit card for a small purchase so I started asking my friends that had one and they said "why the hell would you buy it if you can just download it" piracy is more than crazy prices it's about education and moral.
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First Humble Bundle, you could buy Steam keys for 1 cent. There was still a ton of piracy.
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Piracy would still exist. Look back at the earlier home computers, and their cheaper games (I'm not saying that all games where cheaper, but it was not uncommon to find new games for less than $5), those were still heavily pirated, though obviously lack of internet meant that it would take longer for a pirated copy to reach someone (you would have to copy your friends game, which (s)he in turn had to copy from someone else, who in turn had copied it from someone else...).
And people pirated the first Humble Bundle, when the bundle was still running
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I honestly don't care what others do as long as they keep it to themselves. I don't want to hear about how someone pirated a game I love that didn't get much in the way of sales and I don't want to see people asking for how to pirate. In the end its their conscience and their decision and as long as they can accept the consequences of it, then do whatever.
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Piracy is not OK. Ever. Games are not necessities like food, shelter and medicine. You can do without them. More realistically, you can go play a different game.
If you don't have a credit card, either get one, or go without. If you're not legally allowed to have a credit card, then get your parents to buy the game for you or respect their wishes and do without.
If the game isn't legally available in your region, then bypass whatever region blocks you need to in order to buy the game. Don't go down the lazy route of pirating it.
If the game isn't legally available anywhere, do without it.
The most persuasive argument is the pirating to demo it argument. But only if someone saying it sets a point where they will stop playing a game until they buy it and keeps to that point. Or at least pay full price should they go past that point. I've yet to meet anyone using the 'pirating to demo' argument with that kind of discipline, and I've met plenty who try it with games that already have demos.
There was a time when I would accept some arguments for piracy. But they all assume that people have some right to play a specific game, a right that nobody has ever even tried to justify.
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Last I knew it wasn't ok to "pirate" food, shelter, and medicine either, even if you need them.
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If a game isn't legally available to purchase, then it's the publisher's loss. I'm not going to miss out on great old games because they're not sold first hand anymore.
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I approve of piracy due to the fact that I'm a student with a loan. Maybe my mindset will change once I get $$
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So am I. And that's a goddamn lame excuse. Get a job if you don't have one. And if you do, shame on you.
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Yup, agree.
I was unemployed for a long time, so paying for games was out of question. I finally got a job recently so I'm gonna be able to spend a few Euros on a game every now and again :)
Plus Steam's sales make it easier to buy games, as it can be really cheap :)
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I usually only pirate older games, the newest being PSP games since i hacked mine, I think if i had a better computer I'd probably do it more to try out newer games, but at this point I couldn't even run them so there is no point to it.
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Mine is hacked too, Its great, though if I really like the game I will buy it!
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I was pirating SimCity 4. It has a very wide third party modders.. When it up to sale in Amazon, I bought four copies. Use one, resold three. Never want to buy or pirate SimCity 2013.
I was considering un-pirating The Sims 3 same ways, but now I remember the expansion (Ambitions, Season, Pets, Generations, University Life) and stuff (High End, Outdoor, Townlife), and World (Hidden Springs, Sunlit Tides) and some couches, beds, living room, kitchen and bath things to make the game "functional". So... NO.
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nooooo why would u pirate sim city 4. or even sims 4. be a man and buy their 9.000 DLCs at $30 each
luckily im not really into sims or simcity but i doubt i could keep my cool and not pirate at least 40 out of their 48882 dlcs, because of their ridiculous prices and sheer amount of dlcs.
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Here's a thought If you hate them so much why are you playing their games?
It's like saying I loath the girl but love her company.
If you really hate EA then stay away. By pirating their games you are saying that you like them . . . just refuse to pay. I mean they did make games that you are, in some way, enjoying and thus have to pirate. One way or another you are directly stating that you like EA but I choose not to pay due to the way they convey their business.
Anyhoo, if you really don't like a company don't pirate their games their marketing team still considers a pirated a copy as a sale. . and when they catch someone from a country that is able to find liable they make up your sale. So like it or not you are supporting EA with each time you pirate their games. . and making some other kid suffer more.
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more like i raped the girls without paying,and if EA want to charge me for pirating i'm in fucking narnia
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I think piracy is done for many reasons, but it is the equivalent of taking a car from the sales lot without permission. Sure, you can bring it back and "no harm done," but it's still wrong.
How each pirate deals with his or her wrong-doing is up to him or her, but at a bare minimum, you should be honest with yourself about what you're really doing. What bothers me most about pirating software is that people lie to themselves to justify their actions. Without a willingness to face the truth head-on, how can you ever hope to address your faults?
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Those pixels are someone's full-time job and the way he and his family get their food on the table. If you think a game isn't worth your money, then why are you playing it in the first place?
You call it "downloading free stuff" but it's not that different than picking up a TV that "fell off the back of a truck".
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and the printer, and the printer paper ...
actually it seems like a "good deed" to take your own pictures in the theme park, because you're supporting a shitload of other industry branches and thereby securing jobs =)
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This chain is irrelevant and stupid.
By this logic one could say: You need to pay To get in(on the internet)
You need to pay for your computer
You need to pay for the electricity
You need to pay to get online(already listed but w/e)
And if you disagree with my above statement by saying "you could steal the computer and everything" blah blah..
You have to pay for those things? No. You can sneak in, steal a camera and batteries, and use a hotspot.
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How common it is for a person to justify as right and proper everything I myself do. And wrong is simply everything I myself would not do. Bend and twist and dance around, to find the rule to explain yes, when you did it, it was wrong. But when I did it, it was right. :)
Some clever fellow said act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature. :)
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Does it count as piracy if I use a crack on a game I legitimately purchased to avoid the DRM?
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It's not piracy, but it's still probably not legal (you could always read the license though).
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No, I had to do that once because the DRM was not compatible with my CD-ROM drive and it would not recognize my CD as an original disc. Kind of suck when yo decide to pay for a game and you have to crack it to play it. Makes you want to pirate the next one as it's easier to get it running.
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In the US, it depends on which Federal Circuit you live in I suppose. I know the 5th Circuit Appeals Court ruled that circumventing DRM is only illegal if you intended to violate copyright law.
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It's wrong. Whatever anyone may say, pirating is still stealing. Which is bad.
Even if you say that "I'll buy it later, I'm just trying it", it's the same thing as stealing a TV "just to try it". It's not because it's virtual goods that it isn't worth anything, and may be stolen.
On the other hand, if a game isn't available to purchase, in any way, and the seller just isn't distributing it anymore, then pirate it. If it's just going to rot, might as well enjoy it. But most of the time, the game WILL be available anyways.
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"Wut? Sorry that argument is invalid."
No
No it's not.
Are you interested in the game?
Are you playing the game?
Do you spend money on things that are not essential such as cable, the internet, and other video games?
If all three are yes that's a sale lost.
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Don't bother. It's a waste of time and energy to argue the matter.
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I can: If the user didn't have the ability to prove it yet has the money to buy the computer to play the Game IE: The witcher 3 which needs around an 800 dollar computer to run it then it is a lost sale.
Now if the user didn't have the ability to pirate the game and had the money to buy the computer then they'd buy the game.
See the problem is people who are spoiled who refuse to do proper math.
Now with the ability to pirate people just choose, yes choose not to pay for Game X.
The sad part is that people who pirate games forget that they live in a household to buy an 800$ computer. They are too spoiled to admit that they are using a peice of tech that cost over 500$ to pay at 30$ plus game.
If you don't have the money to support the dev that you like then wait for a sale.
Or keep ripping the people who work hard to get the games you like and shut the hell up. Cause Everyone who pays for games has no respect for thieves who make it more expensive for us to play the games we like .
I hate to break it to you but Publishers make games cost more due to how pirated the last game was. . . So not only are you pirates ripping off the devs but also people who support the games we like.
It is also seen as a lost sale due to the fact that marketers count the amount of pirated copies as lost sales and factor it into the price equation. All the yammering back and forth still misses the point that People who defend piracy and make these ideas of not lost sales. . . aren't part of the development of a game or part of support of sad game. In fact even if you pirate a game then buy it you've still bumped the price of the game by a fraction of a dollar towards the next publishers release.. . thus counting another pirated game when you refuse to pay for the game because it's now ten dollars more then the last game. . . Devs and pirates win with piracy . . people who pay for games lose due to people who pirate. . . so please STFU about not lost sales. You aren't the one counting. . . but I'm, along with those who gift here are, the one(s) paying.
Edit Also I'm one of the ones who work out the math for that price bump (I'm only doing PR). . . and if you really doubt me ask any Dev out there how wrong you are. I'm pretty sure they will, if in a non traceable conversation tell anyone who's trying to justify piracy to take a piss.
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EA games says that there is not a one to one correlation between piracy and lost sales: "Stepping aside from the whole issue of DRM, people need to recognize that every BitTorrent download doesn’t represent a successful copy of a game, let alone a lost sale"
The director of marketing for Reflexive Entertainment estimated that each pirated copy represents only 1/1000 of a lost sale.
Notch agrees that piracy does not equal lost sales.
I also linked down below an article where the CEO of CD Projekt Red states that it's "extremely far from the truth... how serious software companies can consider each pirated copy to be a lost sale."
That's four publishers/developers that disagree with your statements. I'm sure I can dig up more.
I'm not a pirate, nor am I trying to defend piracy. However, the arguments that people are using here (You pirate a $60 game, developers thus "lost" a $60 sale that they should have gotten) are complete fallacies.
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good counter point to the wrong base there. I'm speaking about marketers using pirated tallies to figure in the price of the next gen game increase the ste price on launch. People can play pretty boy over moral ambiguities all they want but the big boys when all is said and done take that missed sale and put it into the factor of their next launch litle. We can talk till be are blue in the face but the AAA guys are always dictating the market and they are one ones factoring those pirated copies as lost sales. They are the ones setting market standards and everything isle is white noise.
Also notice how Witcher 3 is costing more at launch then Witcher 2?
Also a lost sale works around to be around 5 dollars when all is said and done. . . not MSRP
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I may have misconstrued your arguments. Fair enough.
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In many countries Internet is seen as essential and even considered a fundamental right.
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If the pirate wouldn't have bought it either way, it's not a lost sale. I've known some people who simply wouldn't play any game they couldn't pirate.
On the other hand, some people would buy some games if they were unable to obtain them through piracy. Some will also buy a game they really like later on, most of the time when the price lowers.
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"If the pirate wouldn't have bought it either way, it's not a lost sale. I've known some people who simply wouldn't play any game they couldn't pirate. "
It is.
The person has money to spend, but decides to not spend and instead illegally obtains the game/product it's a sale lost.
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It's still a potential lost sale, if he wasn't able to pirate it he may have bought it. If he wants to play it and pirates it while he can afford it, he's a dick. If he cant afford it or doesn't want to pay for it he shouldn't play it and wait for a sale.
All lame excuses trying to justify it, nope, its wrong. Maybe someday you'll get it.
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If he wouldn't have bought it, not being able to pirate it, it's no a lost sale. The sale wouldn't have happened either way.
Don't get me wrong, it's still stealing... just not a lost sale.
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Doesn't matter. It 'could' have been a sale, even you use the word 'IF'. Like I said, just a lame excuse they use to feel less bad about themself.
If piracy wouldn't be possible he may get tempted to buy it because there isn't any other way so: a potential lost sale.
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You have it right. It's a "potential" lost sale, not a guaranteed lost sale as Mozendo is claiming.
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If someone would not have bought the game in any way or form, it's not a lost sale. No matter how you want to spin it. Whether the person had the money to pay for it is irrelevant.
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" No matter how you want to spin it. Whether the person had the money to pay for it is irrelevant."
It's not.
It's a simple thing to grasp, saying money doesn't contribute to lost sales is just wrong.
If you had the money and pirated the game it's a sale lost, mang.
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As all of us are saying, if you never would have bought the game, how can you say it is a lost sale? I think you are usually a totally different definition of lost sale than the rest of the world.
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Please tell me how the post you linked is relevant.
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There's no difference between a person who doesn't buy a game and doesn't pirate it and the person who doesn't buy it and DOES pirate it--unless that's what you mean--any time time you choose not to buy something is a lost sale.
If it is, then your argument has nothing to do with piracy at all.
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Actually I think a lost sale is when I don't pay for a product, whether I pirate it or not. Means simply that the seller has restricted their market by overvaluing their product. Intellectual property is created once, but can be reproduced potentially endless times. This should significantly degrade the value of the product, but prices are artificially kept high by the amount of demand. As time goes on demand drops. Hence Steam Sales.
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Okay, say I download 1000 AAA games, each being sold at $60. That's $60,000. I don't have that much money. How can you say that each one is a $60 lost sale when I couldn't afford to buy that many games in the first place?
Judge James P. Jones's opinion in USA vs. Dove: "Those who download movies and music for free would not necessarily purchase those movies and music at the full purchase price."
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You didn't even read my post did you? Even the CEO of CPR (Creator of Witcher series) says every download is NOT a lost sale. Even a judge in a copyright case ruled it.
I don't pirate, nor do I support piracy, so once again I ask what relevance your post has?
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Ok, so how do you determine which of those downloads is a lost sale and which one was never possible because your sense of entitlement is bigger than your wealth?
Hint: there isn't. Each of those 1000 downloads is individually still a lost sale, even if the aggregate is not possible. If you steal 100 exotic cars from a car dealer the judge doesn't say he's only going to jail you for the first one since you couldn't possibly have afforded the others anyway.
I don't even understand why whether it's a lost sale or not has any bearing on the morality of piracy. See this is what pirates do, they twist words and create strawmen arguments and mess around with meta-debate, instead of simply admitting that for thousands of years, society has been pretty clear that taking stuff that doesn't belong to you is immoral.
The real question is, if you were a developer and sold a game, would you support people downloading your software without paying? Then why would you do that to others? Unfortunately, pirates are usually devoid of empathy (and often, the talent to contribute anything of worth to society) and are unable to envision themselves in such scenarios. Human psychology says people will usually do what they can to 'fit in', and this is why you see pirates attempt to rationalise their behaviour.
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I have not pirated a game in over 8 years at this point, ever since I joined Steam.I don't support piracy at all - you can note through this thread that I have not said one word that implies that I support piracy. I love how you guys love throwing the word "entitlement" around when we are arguing the semantics of what a "lost sale" means NOT whether piracy is moral or not. Even if you steal 100 exotic cars, each one is NOT a lost sale from you. Especially in the case of digital good, where there are infinite copies.
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"I have not pirated a game in over 8 years"
So what you're saying is, you used to pirate games? And no doubt you've got some really good reason why you did it? Like maybe you were a poor college kid, and you couldn't afford to buy games. And of course, because you felt entitled to play certain video games, you chose to download them ;) As I said, every pirate has their sob story, what's yours? I know you're just dying to tell us.
"we are arguing the semantics of what a "lost sale" means NOT whether piracy is moral or not"
I guess you are a little confused here, since the thread title is "what's your opinion about piracy", not "what does a lost sale mean".
But I digress. You seem to be under the impression that a lost sale depends on the aggregate purchase being possible. eg. if I were to pirate a game costing $1, there's 1 lost sale. If I pirate 10 games costing $1, that's 10 lost sales. But if I pirate 5 million games costing $1, there are no lost sales since I couldn't possibly afford $5 million. Do you have any idea how ridiculous your logic is? At which point do you stop calling it lost sales? Do you consider my past, present and future earnings? What about the varying cost of the product? Sure the games may cost $1 each now, but what if tomorrow they went on sale for 1 cent? What if I won the lottery an had the $5 million, do they become lost sales again? What if I then decided to buy a $5M mansion with my lottery money instead? Do they stop becoming lost sales again because I could no longer afford both?
Sorry, but that's not how either business nor the law works. "Lost sales" of course makes no such distinction precisely because of how stupid it is. You may have bought the game, in the past, present or future, but you pirated it instead, ergo the sale was lost. Even if you later bought the game, the sale was still originally lost, but has now been reclaimed - but until that actually happens, it's still a lost sale. But let's not kid ourselves that that every really happens to a significant degree.
I'd be very interested to know from which definition of "lost sales" you are arguing your point because after looking up various definitions of the term (and related topics such as Loss of Chance law) I see nothing about the aggregate price of multiple lost sales having any bearing on the validity of a lost sale.
Perhaps you could try to argue that, if an individual game cost more than someone could possibly afford then it alone is not a lost sale because it could never have been bought. I'd merely argue that it falls under the very definition of a lost sale, because in this case the sale was lost due to the price being too high for that market. "Lost sales" seem to imply that you might have made a sale, but for one reason or another the sale did not occur ie. was "lost". Price might be that reason. So could quality, regional lockout, inability to manufacture sufficient supply etc etc. The fact that a person could not possibly afford one or more products (whether because the person is poor, or the cost of the product(s) exceeds the Gross World Product) seems to precisely fit with the idea of a lost sale.
Maybe you could even argue that piracy does not cause lost sales, because it is actually the act of not buying the game that causes the lost sale, the piracy is inconsequential. I'd agree with that, and add that piracy merely reduces the chance of reclaiming the sale to not much more than 0%. But as you said, the statement was "each pirated copy of anything is equivalent to a lost sale", it was not explicitly declared that the piracy was the cause of the lost sale, so the statement is true. With the addendum that technically even people who might have bought the game but neither did so nor pirated it are also lost sales. Taking the definition liberally, with an infinite supply, there are 7 billion potential sales; and anyone who doesn't buy the game is a lost sale.
Regardless, there does not in fact appear to be a single concrete definition of the term other than vague references to sales potential, so it seems kind of stupid and pointless to debate its meaning if no definition has been agreed to; especially, as noted, in the case of digital goods which do not fall under the typical constraints of supply and demand marketing. If the question is really about, might the person have bought the game if they didn't pirate it, the answer is unequivocally yes, they might have. 'Might' meaning potentially = potentially sold, but did not sell, ergo the sale was lost.
Yes there are other factors that come into play, eg. if they did this 1000 times, they might have bought the first one, they might have bought the second one, but after game purchase #376 they would have run out of disposable income, under controlled circumstances. We can't say which game this would happen on. There is no deterministic way to order the games to find the cutoff. The circumstances cannot be controlled. All we know is, under certain conditions (eg. a better job, a cash windfall, a stocktake sale, the pirate having morals), each game individually might have been purchased. But it wasn't. That sure sounds like a lost sale to me.
TL;DR version:
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I'm only going to respond to your first and second paragraphs (which are also the only ones I've read) because I don't have too much time right now. I'll get to the rest later today.
Regarding your first paragraph - the last time I pirated a game was when I was around 12 years old and didn't know any better. Are you seriously going to hold it against me and try to invalidate my arguments because I pirated when I was between the ages of 10 and 12? I think you yourself may have some maturing to do if you think that what you do as a child should stay with you for the rest of your life.
This thread is about piracy as a whole, but the post I responded to was not - all it stated was "That's wrong. It's a sale lost no matter how you look at it." This is the prompt I was responding to - so I am only talking about piracy being equivalent to lost sales, nothing about morality.
I feel that we have entirely different definitions of what a lost sale is. My definition is the following: it is the one to one equivalence in how much money the rights holder has "lost" due to pirating. It means to say that for every copy pirated when the only sale price is $60, the rights holder can count exactly $60 as lost profit. I believe this is the definition of lost sales that the people I quoted in this post and this post use as well. Do you think these developers/publishers/rights holders are all pirates?
Edit: fixed some misspellings and edited for clarity and for less inflaming rhetoric.
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Okay, I read through the other paragraphs and I think I addressed all your points already in my previous post. It seems the only point of contention we have is what exactly we believe a lost sale to be.
"If the question is really about, might the person have bought the game if they didn't pirate it, the answer is unequivocally yes, they might have."
I agree. There is a potential lost sale here. I would not agree, however, if you reword the statement, to the following:
"If the person had not pirated the game, he/she would have bought it."
We can see the difference in wording implies that the person would have bought the game with 100% certainty if not for pirating - thus a 1:1 lost sale.
As I'm sure I stated somewhere else in this thread, there is not this 1:1 equivalence between a pirated copy and a lost sale. For every copy pirated, there is some fraction of a lost sale (estimated at 1/1000 by the devs of Ricochet), not a whole one.
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"We can see the difference in wording implies that the person would have bought the game with 100% certainty if not for pirating"
So then your definition of a lost sale essentially relies on having a crystal ball. Therefore there could not possibly be such a thing as a lost sale in any context. The term is effectively useless. Somebody should go and tell the business professors not to bother teaching the concepts of lost and potential sales since we can't know the future with 100% certainty. Congratulations! By redefining "lost sale" to impose requirements that are impossible to meet - thus making the term utterly useless as a concept - you've won the argument! Maybe we could also say "lost sale" is defined as a yellow 3-headed elephant, and since video game piracy is not a yellow 3-headed elephant, piracy is not a lost sale. See, I can play this game too!
Or perhaps you'd like to cite your source for this definition of a lost sale? Can you even cite an example of a "lost sale", in any business context, that meets this impossible criteria where you know with 100% certainty the consequence of changing a variable? I'm sure Lorenz would be impressed by your mastery of chaos theory!
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I have tried to remain civil throughout this conversion with you, but apparently your method of debate is to antagonize the other party by calling them pirates and insinuating that they are complete idiots. Congratulations, you win this internet debate.
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But you are a pirate. You admitted so yourself. And I didn't even hold it against you in my actual debate points.
And if the only thing you got out of me pointing out how ridiculous your definition of a "lost sale" is that I'm insinuating you're an idiot...well I think it speaks volumes that you made that connection, not me. Which I'll take as a compliment that I succeeded in pointing it out. So much so that I'm willing to overlook your feigned outrage at fictitious ad hominen in your conceit. Aren't I nice.
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Ah, the old editing comments to make your opponent look bad trick. I have issues with your very narrow viewpoint that once a criminal always a criminal. Apparently I'm also a thief too, because I accidentally stole a toy when I was 7. Good thing the courts in most countries don't agree with you. Anyways, I'm done here, so have I hope you have a good weekend (no sarcasm or insult meant here).
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"I don't even understand why whether it's a lost sale or not has any bearing on the morality of piracy."
Oh, I guess you're a little confused here because you didn't read through the thread of comments. In particular, I, along with many others, are arguing with Mozendo, who stated that each pirated copy of anything is equivalent to a lost sale (ie. RIAA is owed $72 trillion because of piracy, greater than how much money exists in the whole world). I am not discussing the morality of piracy here. I don't want to repeat myself, but I feel it is important to say once again that I do not support piracy.
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Yup, exactly! That's how RIAA can add up all of their lost "sales" due to piracy at $72 trillion, more than the GDP of the entire world!
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Why does it matter if it's a lost sale or not? That's not even the original intent of copyright.
Is your only measure of something being wrong based on whether the victim experiences a physical loss or not? What about murder? Trespass? Or even fraud, where the "victim" willingly hands over their possessions? Funnily enough, there's not much difference between piracy and fraud, since piracy basically involves the criminal obtaining financial benefit (a copy of the game) through deception (by installing and playing the game, you are falsely stating you have the legal right to do so).
Piracy is so much more than depriving the creator of a sale. Piracy is essentially saying, "I feel entitled to benefit from your hard work without compensation, and I disagree with your right to determine who and how your product may be sold".
And it's this sentiment that is always overlooked when pirates try to claim that piracy "benefits" developers.
Firstly, piracy is often quoted (without evidence to backup that claim, mind you) to increase sales of a product. But that only works if people ultimately buy the game. The pirate relies on his peers to purchase the game to counteract his piracy for this argument to work. Basically, the pirates expects his buddies to pay for a game that he himself won't. Besides the hypocrisy and entitlement required, the pirate is manipulating his friends for his own gain. This is called sociopathy.
Secondly, even if piracy benefited the developers, that still doesn't give you the right to assume control over distribution of the game. They are a business, and they are free to go about their business any way they like, within the law. Even if you think you can run their business better. Do you break into Exxon Mobil board meetings, hold guns to their heads, and order them to diversify their R&D into Antarctic oil drilling for greater profit? Do you hack into Microsoft servers and rewrite chunks of code to restore the core Desktop mode and Start button?
No? Then why do you illegally download a game for your own enjoymen...oh. I see. Of course. This was never really about the 'greater good' was it? This is, has always been, and always will be, nothing more than you, the pirate, wanting stuff for free. You may claim that "ooh the evil company made it too expensive, I HAD to pirate it", conveniently overlooking the fact that you could have simply not bought the game. But no, you chose to make that leap to piracy. Because you felt entitled to it. And that's why piracy is wrong. It's never about the price. Or the lack of a demo. Or the DRM, region locks, language options, quality, replayability, platform, distribution method, staggered release dates... Hell, take any aspect of a video game and a pirate will give that reason as justification for stealing. Yeah, those things can suck, and some of them are even strong enough reasons not to buy a game. But they don't make you steal. These are just things they tell themselves to overcome their cognitive dissonance. They could have gone without, they chose to take instead. That's entitlement.
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But... if i don't like the tv, i have a few days to return it to the store, and get my cash back for it. I can't do that on steam. So, how can i be sure that the game i want to buy is not terribad? Reviews? What about different tastes? Ex.: I really liked Murdered Soul Suspect. It has 60ish (sorry i don't know the exact number) metascore. Imo it did worth the price i paid for it, a lot of ppl wouldn't pay that much for it. I'm not saying piracy is right, but it can be used for the right reasons. I bought a lot a of games (both digitally and on disk) which i did pirate first. Ps.: Sorry for any mistakes/typos i might made.
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I pirate and buy game. Both worlds in my hands.
I pirate games with dumb things I hate e.g Ubishit/EA products.
I also pirate overpriced games e.g The Witcher 3 (soon when it's available).
I'm not trying to justify 'pirating is ok', or putting up an excuse 'I also buy games', I am merely stating my behavior over piracy.
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"I pirate games with dumb things I hate e.g Ubishit/EA products. "
If you're pirating a game, so you want to play it right ? Which means you like it.
So you like the game but you hate the developer/publisher ?
If not, why would you want to pirate a game if you don't like/want to play it?
Just asking :)
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I think theres shouldn't be piracy. As in everything should be given for free. However, each to their own. My main argument why piracy isn't a problem is what zeroxxx already said, which is that in many situations no money is lost since the pirate won't buy the stuff anyway.
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Piracy is okay, if you dont have enough money for games or movies or songs and you want to spend your money on the dinner you want to make for your kids than do so. Piracy is the ill pay for it later but for now ill just play it free way out.
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I think information (that includes games, music, movies...) should be totally free. Paying for it is just a form of donation to support the developers.
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"As protest against draconian DRM, like always-on internet required for a SP game."
Wasn't it pirates who prompted the devs to make DRM schemes in the first place?
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Just seems like an endless cycle of pirates downloading and the devs making up more DRMs.
Also, why should the devs be punished for trying to protect their work? Seems like they should punish the uploaders more...since their actions caused the devs to go through the DRM route...but that's my biased opinion. :/
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"Also, why should the devs be punished for trying to protect their work?"
If they are dumb enough to think it will work they should be punished.
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Certainly people uploading pirated games are the most to blame but it's also been shown repeatedly that extreme versions of DRM cause a lot of harm to paying customers and don't stop piracy any more than the less extreme versions.
I don't think that justifies pirating though. I think the companies should be punished by terrible ratings and bad sales numbers. If a game has DRM you don't like, don't play it.
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Yes, and most of the time these DRM measures mostly harm the legitimate customers.
I personally have not bought Starcraft II and Diablo III because of the way Blizzard handled those games. I don't want to be playing a single player MMO and if I do play against others it will be over my LAN, not the Internet. By increasing their DRM, they've actually lost many sales. The way those games currently are, piracy is the only way I would consider playing them. (And this is coming from someone who bought every pre-WoW Blizzard game even back when I was pirating 90% of my games because it was one of the developers I felt really deserved my money.)
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Piracy is OK for someone who does not have internet connection(Broadband, 3g).
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I used to pirate games, mostly because I couldn't afford them. Now that I have a steady income, I prefer to buy them to support the developers and because my free time is now more valuable to me and I can't be bothered with cracks, torrents and the likes.
Piracy IS stealing, whatever the justifications you try to put on it. Even if nothing is physically taken away from anyone else, you're still getting something you didn't pay for.
Pirating a game as a form of demo is probably doing more good than harm to developers (as long as the game is good) because it can result in a sale. It's not right but it's definitely a much smaller offense.
As for someone who says he wouldn't have bought the game anyway, while it's not technically a lost sale it's still stealing. If you wouldn't have bought the game at all, then why are you even playing it?
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I'm talking about someone who says I pirate because I wouldn't have bought the game, even if I could. If the game as so little value to someone, why do they even spend any time playing it?
Giveaways aren't piracy. You're getting a game someone has paid for. Maybe you couldn't afford it, maybe you wouldn't have bought it because it didn't appeal to you. (If the latter, then it's just a dick move to enter a giveaway for it.)
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There are games I find too expensive, so I wait until their price go down. A games that's released at $60 will most definitely get it's price lowered within a few months. Add 50% and 75% sales to that and I will probably be able to buy that game for $10-$15 within a year.
The point is, if I find it too expensive I simply don't play it. I either wait for it to go down or get lucky with a giveaway. It's only games, no one will die from not playing one.
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I there's a game I want to play, I will probably buy it down the line when the price is right for me. I've entered giveaways for games I were on the fence about, but if I feel I wouldn't play a game then I simply won't enter a giveaway for it. If a game is worth playing, then it's worth buying.
If someone gifted me a game I have no interest in, I might still try it out, but I would have never looked for it in the first place.
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Every song I listen on the radio has been paid for by the advertisers, whose adds I listen to, same goes with movies on TV. (If it's a specialized channel, they I actually pay extra on my cable bill.) If I like a song enough that I want to be able to listen to it whenever I want, then I have the opportunity to go online and purchase it, or buy the CD. If I like a movie enough I will buy the Blu-Ray.
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I didn't steal it. Someone paid for it. (The advertisers) If I downloaded the MP3 of the song, from a torrent, then I'd be stealing.
It's the same as playing a game at a friend's house. You didn't steal anything, you played his (hopefully) legally-owned copy.
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Yes, and if everyone went to the cracker's house to play with his copy there would be no issue. But that's not what happens. The pirates will download their own copy without paying for it.
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But he did "buy" them; just indirectly. As Zomby already said, the advertisers have already paid the radio station, which would have paid the artists. He listens to the advertisements, which is, in a way, "paying" the advertisers, because what does advertising make you do? Go off and buy their products.
EDIT: Hadn't reloaded the page in a while, so didn't see that Zomby had already replied :P
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Last game I pirated was Age of Empires, way back when I was on dial up. I guess it was just too much of a hassle so I'd rather work and make money, and then just buy and install the game. Now because of steam, i'm addicted to buying games to make my steam library massive, no idea why!
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I'm one of those people who treads the line. I do not pirate games, I have no need to. I don't believe that the lack of credit card is a good enough reason - ever. There is almost always a viable alternative.
If however you live in a country like Mexico (just an example, I know many other countries are in the same shoes) where the average wage is fucking tiny, yet the price of games is higher than even in Europe, fuck the publishers and the developers. When a game can be sold in the US for $60+ Tax (let's say $66?) and it costs $78 in Mexico (about £46 or €57) I have no sympathy for them. Piracy is rife here, so rather than do what they do in Russia, they've decided to increase prices.
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That doesn't work for console games for the most part when postage is included
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While some games deserve to be lost for all time, others that fall under the abandonware blanket should not. Without "piracy" many of these would have already been lost and some have been resurrected via pirate copies. This is the sole reason I am in favor of piracy at all; preservation. All other reasons I just can't get behind.
Slightly off topic but an example that can easily be researched is the lost Doctor Who episodes (I know TV not games) many which were thought to be forever gone after a fire where they were stored have been restored thanks to people illegally recording them at home on VHS and sending the recording to the BBC. Despite that there are still some episodes missing. Piracy of old games prevents this being a reality for games as the pirates become the librarians.
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The TV thing is true, except for the fact that the BBC decided to record over the shows rather than it be a fire.
It also happened to one of my favourite shows, Dad's Army.
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Actually, it's only legal if you dump the ROM yourself from your own cartridge.
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It all depends on your interpretation of all the various copyright laws and trials that have happened, most of which had nothing to do with games.
The DMCA actually makes it illegal to sell cartridge dumping hardware or even to share the plans for how to build one or to let someone borrow one if you somehow did manage to legally make one. Dumping ROMS is legal of course but the law doesn't actually provide any reasonable, legal way to do it. So what do you do when the law makes it effectively impossible for most people to legally obtain something they are legally allowed to own? I imagine this is why we don't see companies go after rom downloaders. By bringing it to the courts they would run the risk of losing and making it easier to legally obtain roms, either by scratching to laws against rom-dumpers or by reducing the restrictions on downloading roms for games you own. Better to just let it sit undecided for all of eternity.
I think in the end, the people providing the roms are the ones truly at risk. Everyone else is in this sort of legal purgatory.
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In the UK, it has only just become law to rip your own CDs to MP3s. Personal use was not art of UK law for years, it was just largely ignored.
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What do you think about downloading a game without paying to the people who made it?.
In my opinion:
Piracy is OK is you can not buy original games (for example: you live in a place where's hard to get games, you don't have a credit card, etc).
Piracy is NOT OK if you can buy games without any difficulties and you still download games in an ilegal way.
What do you think about this topic?
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