Today I only download games in ways that are not the official ones for testing purposes, as today almost no dev is releasing demos anymore.
I test for a couple of days, and if I like it I buy it.
Just bought Cities Skylines recently doing that. And have also downloaded games that I did not buy after because I didn't liked. No regrets. No bad feels.
But I do think that some people that do that, wouldn't buy the official copy anyway.
So, when I hear those numbers, I think of "plus", instead of "minus". If a game sold 1 million copies, and got 500k downloads, they did not lost 500k costumers, but they gained 500k people talking about their game and influencing other people to buy it. From these 500k, only a small percentage would have conditions to buy the game anyway and are only thinking of saving money.
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I have to thanks pirates for preserving our local film in digital form. There is no way that I could acquire the DVD from retailers, because they don't make DVDs anymore. Plus, local film are dying.
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The abandonment aspect of intellectual property is interesting to me. I'm unsure of how the laws are setup, but would fully support providing incentive for preservation of abandoned IP. There's very much a public/private balance that needs to help shape IP structure.
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The problem is that current copyright extends for a very long time (+70 years after death in the US for example) and with the ever evolving digital age, old forms of media are becoming obsolete a lot quicker.
When it comes to games, the owners are unlikely to preserve the original source code, let alone working copies of the game and thus these games will most likely be long gone before they enter public domain. We have already lost a lot of games because we cannot legally archive without breaking the law and the owners are either unknown, unreachable or no longer care but refuse to extend permission for w/e reason. This is a real issue and one that needs to be resolved sooner rather than later for the sake of the medium.
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I've read articles that even if the source code is maintained, that over time it's just going to be more and more difficult to properly emulate old computers on newer computers. It's apparently far more complicated than DosBox or what GOG is doing now. Heck, we can't even get alot of games to run right on today's machines. ;-) I guess we need to save the "let's play" videos.
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This is true due to how games are fixed via patching among other things. Essentially, we are screwed unless the industry can get its shit together :/.
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I used to pirate when I was younger since I wasn't of age to have a job and my parents didn't support my "gaming addiction", and birthday/Christmas money only went so far when games could cost anywhere from $50-80, leaving pirating to be the only option.
Then I discovered Humble Bundle when they launched their first Origin bundle back in 2013, which opened the window to a wide range of access to games for a low price. Haven't pirated games since (it helps that I got a job last year too).
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My experience is similar to yours. I think and proceed in the same manner too.
When I was younger, tough, it was about price so I pirated back then.
In regards to movies and TV series, I have yet to find a convenient service (putting aside availability).
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I generally don't pirate stuff. I work in the music industry and I also make money as an artist and I can sometimes get pissy when people rip off stuff that I worked on. If I think something is too expensive for what I value it at then I wait for a sale or do without. The only things I consider pirating are when I feel the pricing structure, DRM or other restrictions are completely obnoxious and unfair.
My only current bugbear is comics. I love comics and I'm OK with some companies that are now providing downloads in offline formats that I actually want to use via comixology and so on. But I'm not funding other publishers that only provide overpriced online-DRM comics through half-assed web-browser viewers with quality that is actually worse than the far more convenient pirate versions...
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I'm anti-pirating for the most parts, even though I rarely can afford to purchase anything due to a lack of, er, "financial stability".
The only thing I keep doing which could be considering pirating is grabbing the audio off Youtube for my personal listening pleasure. No way I could afford actually buying all of these music tracks, not that most of them aren't already free anyways.
Oh, and I also stream videos from websites, which I assume, aren't allowed to redistribute them. Who knows. When I search "watch [title]" on Google, I don't really have any idea if I'm "pirate streaming" or not.
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Douh for some reason few years ago they made a pirate torrent tracket legal here, most of the movie production here upload their own movies there, themselfs... But still here people go to the cinema or buy the game after they saw the movie/played the game pirated, so not sure if bad or good...
I mean there was a huge debate, wanted to sue the tracker and stuff and at the end a lot of movie companies defended it and say its a "good place to advert.
Eh what do I know, they got a huge amount of adverts there, so they probly just pay a % of the ads, to the componies to keep the tracker running w.o. issues xD
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I know this thread is old, but just in case someone cares I'm dropping this here: https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-found-piracy-do-1818629537
The report found that illegal downloads and streams can actually boost legal sales of games, according to the report. The only negative link the report found was with major blockbuster films:“The results show a displacement rate of 40 percent which means that for every ten recent top films watched illegally, four fewer films are consumed legally.”
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There have been some topics about this already, but mostly focused on games. I'm curious about where people stand in all media piracy. I'll start:
I believe the root of piracy isn't price, even though it's a factor, but mostly the quality of the service and product.
I used to pirate PC games because there was no way to buy them, in my country the only place that sells PC games is the capital, my city sells ZERO PC games, and even in the capital they cost (at the time) around $100~120. Then about 2 years ago my country started using debit cards and I found Steam, since then I've been getting my games digitally, but since then the country has blocked all cards because of a problem with currency.
But what about movies, music, shows, etc.? For these unfortunately, I engage in the practice, but because there are no places that sell DVDs or Blu-rays of movies or shows, and the only CDs for sale in the stores are of local artists, and services like Netflix, iTunes, etc. aren't available here. If you got the only cinema in the city you find movies that are 6-8 months old, and only a very small fraction of movies make it there.
Pirating something means that the creator if the product won't get the money he deserves from that sale, but if it's impossible to buy it then that sale doesn't really exist. Should you be denied the product because there is no way to make the purchase? Is it still wrong?
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