OK, this is an interesting topic, and I think we may get a lively debate going here…
Piracy, where do you stand on it?Please note that this applies equally to games, movies, music, etc. so if you say "Pirating games is wrong!" because you're a game developer, but then download music, you're a big fat hypocrite.My stance is that it is freedom of information. I believe that you have a right to access information without having to pay some sort of fee, and this includes forms of entertainment.But how then, do the producers of information make money?Simple. Movies make money by showing in theaters. Music artists make money by performing live. Both will also profit by selling merchandise. These are extremely profitable ventures, and indeed, music artists for instance rarely make a dime off of record sales anyway, all of that money goes to the RIAA, unless you're huge like Metallica or something.Furthermore, some individuals who are not past pirating will buy legitimate copies anyway, because they simply want to have an 'official' copy. I download games, but I buy legitimate copies of Pokemon games because that's my thing. I just want a legit copy for no other reason than wanting a legit copy.Piracy is not some huge threat to the industries. There will ALWAYS be people available to purchase official copies or merchandise, or go to live viewings and performances. And in the case of small game developers or independent music artists, people are much more likely to shell out the cash as a sign of support for such groups.Piracy stops with accessing information, however. The freedom to access information does not and should not allow you to profit off of other people's ideas by selling their information as your own. The producers of information still 'own' that information and they own the right to make money off of it.
I get all my crap illegally. I have no money, and I'm not exactly the most moral person when it comes to piracy either. I say it's fine as long as you support and pay once in a while to the people that made the works you use. Like, if I really like an artist, I'll buy their CD. Photoshop I got illegally, but I don't really use it very much in the first place, so why would I pay so much for it to just try it?
I don't pirate anything but I'm not against it.
I pirated everything I could get my hands on since I got high speed Internet access. However, if I can't play a game either because whoever posted it didn't do it right, or online won't work unless you've got an account, and I'm quite sure my money won't go to waste or there's a special discount (Steam :3), then I won't hesitate on paying.
I really don't care if I'mstealingcopying from a big music/movies/games/art developer or an indie one. It's quick, convenient, has (practically) zero risks, and specially, it's free.Also, I'm not a fan of "I like buying it so I can have the packaging", having my digital stuff in a 500GB HD is quite handy.Why should people pay $700 for Flash Professional if its a piece of shit? As a software developer, I would kind of like it if people bought the programs I made, but some of these companies are just being stupid. Some games are nearing $70 to buy, which is ridiculous. If it costs these companies millions of dollars to churn out halo-clones and pathetic attempts at free-roaming games, THEY ARE DOING IT WRONG.
The morality of piracy in general is irrelevant. Anything not dependent on an online service will be cracked no matter what, and fighting against it only serves to piss off all the customers. This is called a shift in the economy, and software developers have to suck it up and deal with it. Piracy happens, it doesn't matter if its good or bad, so people have to deal with it, and right now companies are just shooting themselves in the foot with decade-old DRM attempts that all totally fail.Speaking for music and as a composer, its really hard to make money preforming live if you make electronic music, which is one of the primary issues. Radio is supposed to solve this but its not doing a very good job. Because music is just information, its completely impossible to protect it in any way, as the industry has discovered over the last 5 years. Thus, if you make music, at this point you simply can't make a living off of it unless you are very popular and have people willing to buy your album rather then pirate it. Of course if your a rock band you can make plenty of money just by ripping off all the famous rock songs or banging on power chords really loud and people are usually too dumb to care.The hilarious irony here is that non-performance based music has been largely enabled by the internet, and yet the internet is also what makes it impossible to make any money off of it. The only solution here is to work out a sponsoring system, so an artist can be sponsored to create music for the sole purpose of trying to create high quality art, and then any extra money they happen to make off of it, yay for them.Most of this argument doesn't really matter, since the morality of piracy isn't going to stop anyone from pirating stuff. People steal stuff. That's how the world works. I think everyone complaining about it should just fucking deal with it because it isn't going to change.Pirate games and music are freely available in my country, the government does very little, if anything at all, to prevent it. When you buy consoles usually they sell them already hacked/chipped and with a ton of pirated games.
Legit PC games are basically impossible to find, so if you really want a legit copy you must buy them at some foreign website such as Amazon or Steam. You can buy legit music at stores, but the selection is limited (Want a Dragonland's CD? too bad) and there are no local online music stores, so you must go online again.And to put the cherry on top of the cake, the government limits us to $400 a year on foreign currency to be spent online, making piracy practically the only choice.However, when it comes to console games and big companies software (Microsoft, Adobe) you can get them legitimately here. But nobody does. Computer stores usually sell non-branded desktops preloaded with pirated Windows and other software. The only way people get to see a legit copy of Windows is when they buy a branded desktop or a laptop.I find Josea's situation to be rather interesting. How can you crack down on piracy if the civilians have almost no realistic way of not doing it?
Speaking of pricing, I refuse to spend more than $50 for a game right now. I just wait for the prices to drop, usually even for $50 games.
I do pirate on occasion. I still don't have a solid opinion on it, but as an artist I know that I'd prefer people to buy my music- something that ticks at me whenever I get the urge to pirate some else's stuff.
But anyways.I would like to comment on the fact that many of you have expressed comfortability in pirating stuff sold on e.g. a major record label. A couple things:It brings us back to the "do two wrongs make a right?" question. They (ex. large record companies) might do immoral things with their power, but you are also doing an immoral thing by stealing. You don't go to a grocery store and steal Cheetos because Frito Lay is a division of PepsiCo, so why is it ok to steal music put out by a major label?Further, whether or not you steal from a major record label or a small record label you are still stealing the product made by the band or artist. Saying "oh, but the artist only gets 3% of the profit anways" is bullshit because a) stealing the music gives them even less money and b) if the artist wanted to support the destruction of major record labels, they wouldn't sign with them in the first place.But I also think all of this debate over the morality of piracy is pointless. PIRACY WILL CONTINUE NO MATTER WHAT. The question is how to adjust to it.Do we offer discounts on concert tickets with the purchase of a CD? Do we bump up the price of concerts to compensate for lost sale revenue (already in effect)? Do we let record companies die and normalize artists distributing their own music, hoping to eradicate the moral buffer of a record company? It goes on.I tend to thinkthings will just happen.People need to support themselvesthey will do this in whatever clever way they can findeventually some new standard practice will arise.We're living in an exciting time because we're seeing all of this unfold!I GPL all of my work; in fact I will end up GPL'ing my zPlat engine in the future.
GPL stands for General Public License. Basically, it's a great software license that allows people to1) Run the program anywhere, on any hardware/OS/whatever.2) Modify it however they please (they need the source, of course)3) Redistribute the originals or mods, selling or giving them.4) But they must keep the license and attribute the original.My reasons are partially personal. I'll number my rationales in correspondence to the previous numbered list.2) This Freedom is one I support for personal reasons. Computers were originally designed to be scientific devices, and software, especially programs written in C in the old UNIX systems were shared, usually with simple licenses and a market to go with it, and the source code was shared. I mean, you could SELL an open-source project. I usually call programs that support that kind of thing "freedomware," although the Free Software Foundation calls it "Free Software." You can see how that would be confusing, but they always refer to Freedom, just to let you know. You don't have to be proprietary to be commercial, you know.3) I have a pretty good reason for this. Some people may want to translate the thing into another language or use the source to develop a translation pack (even cooler). The big point is that it permits piracy, because you see pirates saying that people should support non-DRM game developers and whatnot (huge case is World of Goo), so not only are you open-source, but if you're not breaking the 'freedoms' with DRM, you've got a huge community backing and supporting you. I think that redistributing freedomware is a good thing, I'd rather have them make money. Some countries can't access my servers and need someone else to do some localization.4) I do NOT want companies taking my project (like they would, HA!) and turning it into some proprietary, closed-source, over-advertised, non-credited piece of shit, so the license FORCES derivatives to redistribute both binaries and source. Therefore, all of the modifications can be contributed back to other projects and communities.This has been a pretty shit shot at sniping in a discussion about a lovely little copyright license, but it seems to solve my problems, so I thought I'd suggest it.I think that whatever you can listen to on the radio should not have a charge to download it. Also, you can hear any song you want on the internet anyways, so its basically common ground. But artists are not going to not play songs on the radio, because nobody would know their talent, and they probably wouldn't take a chance buying an album of a band they have never heard before.
I also do not feel bad for the artists that are pirated, especially they big bands, because I know that a lot of times, their profits are just turned into drugs.And I also agree for the producers it can be frustrating, especially if they just produced something new such as a video game and people stop buying it because they can get it for cheaper from someone else. Which leads to the point that their information is over charged in my view. I mean, 60 dollars for a new xbox game? It cost them like 2 dollars to make it…I also agree that it is wrong to sell the property of someone else that you either got legitimately, or via piracy, and especially if they got it for free like from game producers just trying to get publicity, like this site.