"He's a Pirate" - A Serious Discussion

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

With the onset of modern media, and with the advancements of the technological age, it seems as if the current economic troubles of America and other countries - along with interest sparked by the whole PIPA/SOPA/ACTA nonsense have resulted in a "spike" of public interest in Piracy.
There seems to be several sides to the issues at hand: There's those against Internet Piracy, and say that it hurts the economy. There's also those who advocate for it in favor of the free distribution of data and ideas.

I personally think that it's mainly strict and overreaching Copyright laws and policies that are so broad that I can write a movie and have it marked as my property for an unreasonable amount of time after my death. My idea that I had - based off of other ideas, of course - instantly became a cash cow that nobody could distribute or buld upon.

So, what do the individuals of the League Of Reason think of Internet Piracy?
The Pros? The Cons? The Impact Upon Society?

This is a boarderline post due to the fact that it is a discussion of Piracy - however, it should be noted that none of this post represents the ideals of the League of Reason or all of it's members. This is to engage the board in a serious and open discussion about the Pros and Cons of Internet Piracy, Copyright, and the measures used to prevent it.
Nobody posting here shall advocate the act of Piracy or theft of Intellectual Property by direct linking to any material distributed illegally without the claimholder's permission in the UK, the EU, the United States, or your local

 

[ImprobableJoe]

If we want to be serious? There are several issues that are being falsely slammed together.

There's an economic issue.

There's an issue of rights of creators.

There's the issue of consumers being really fucking stupid, evil, and stupid again because there's no limit to how stupid those people are (and I want to beat all of them with a shit-dipped sea bass), who think that they have some sort of right to the products of creators.

There's a legal issue which can get a bit complicated sometimes, because I'm kind of cool with someone who makes a cash purchase being able to make a backup copy, because I have physical copies of like 6,000 songs and apparently I can use my original copy to make a shitload of digital versions to stream around my house. So I think I can make a physical copy for my own use too, since I can't see a difference between a copy on a hard drive and a copy on a CD or DVD.

So, you know... complicated.

 

[televator]

Personally, I suppose I pirate when something is new and supported by the creator and I own it already (the creator got my money already), or when something is out of print for old hardware (No proper channel for me to purchase "right to use"). I stay away from pirating new and supported works I didn't buy already, because I also think a creator deserves compensation for what they create.

 

[Laurens]

I think part of the problem is pricing, especially with software. The latest Adobe Photoshop costs ,£667.20 to buy in its full form, if you ask me that is practically begging people to pirate it.

If you were to ask 100 people who showed an interest in using Photoshop, whether they would be willing to pay such a price to get it, I'd wager a lot of them (probably even the majority) would say 'no'. And there's your problem...

 

[Duvelthehobbit666]

A big problem I see is a pricing and service problem. Corporations ask too much money. I am not going to go and pay 17 euros for a CD every time I want one. That costs way too much, especially when in the US the same CD costs about half of that. To me that is just a big FUCK YOU to your customers. In the cinema I pay almost 10 euros for a ticket, then need to spend about as much on snacks and drinks, and as a bonus, I get to spend half an hour watching commercials BEFORE THE FUCKING PREVIEWS EVEN START. I did not pay for a ticket to watch M&M commercials, I payed it to watch a fucking movie. And the cinemas can't do anything about it because they need to pay way too much to have permission to show it.

Another thing which is beyond comprehension is that some movies won't be shown in my country. Iron Skies is not coming out here. They think it won't make enough money. SO people should't be surprised when this movie is pirated a lot here and I am in favor of this. If they don't want to show their movie here, then they do not care enough about me as a customer, so they won't get my money. It is not that people think they are entitled little shits and think they can download it for free but rather that it is too difficult to get either through high prices or a lack of availability.

Gaming has the same problem. If a game is too old to be able to buy then pirating is the only option. Or if a publisher is being a dickhead and making a game only available through Origin and nor Steam, when I already have Steam and don't want Origin, that is only going to lead to less people buying the game. I agree with what Hytegia said on the other thread. I knwo people who buy games after they download them because it was a good game. No sense in spending 40 euros on a game only to be disappointed by it. And a lot of the big games out there aren't good anymore. They are just repeats of the same old stuff we have seen before. Mostly generic brown shooters. And like Hytegia, I tend to be a lot more friendly towards Indie games because that is where the creative people are these days and that is where money should go.

And yes I do want people getting money for what they make. However, when these people, or more likely the people in between me and the creators, get greedy and ask too much or won't sell it near me due to "lack of sales", this show me that I am just a wallet where they can pull money out of a not a living breathing customer. Something I have noticed is that customers aren't treated properly anymore in a lot of places and it is not just the media companies. Right now piracy isn't the problem but the service media companies are providing.

 

[Duvelthehobbit666]

I think part of the problem is pricing, especially with software. The latest Adobe Photoshop costs ,£667.20 to buy in its full form, if you ask me that is practically begging people to pirate it.

If you were to ask 100 people who showed an interest in using Photoshop, whether they would be willing to pay such a price to get it, I'd wager a lot of them (probably even the majority) would say 'no'. And there's your problem...

That is what open source is for.

 

[Laurens]

I think part of the problem is pricing, especially with software. The latest Adobe Photoshop costs ,£667.20 to buy in its full form, if you ask me that is practically begging people to pirate it.

If you were to ask 100 people who showed an interest in using Photoshop, whether they would be willing to pay such a price to get it, I'd wager a lot of them (probably even the majority) would say 'no'. And there's your problem...

That is what open source is for.

Yes that is one solution, however for those who are ignorant to it, or swayed by branding or whatever then piracy is the other solution.

 

[australopithecus]

If someone could point me to an open source program as good, and easy to use, as Photoshop then that would be awesome. PS7 is a little old these days.

As for piracy, I have had my time torrenting and with the likes of Limewire, but to be honest I can't be bothered anymore. Music and movies I get pretty much through Netflix and Spotify for less than I'd pay for a single album or DVD a month. The problem is people think that because something is expensive they have the right to own it for free, which is stupid. Also, charging what companies do for music and films is also stupid.

Both sides are stupid, let's just all live in caves and pretend entertainment media was just a dream.

 

[CosmicJoghurt]

As far as I'm concerned, piracy will always be here to fuck with copyright laws, because that's just how the internet works, and there's no stopping it. Now, these ridiculous anti-piracy laws aren't doing anything but annoy the fuck out of some people and enable large corporations to make tons of money suing people over useless stuff.

 

[CEbbesen]

Piracy in alot of cases is just evidence that the big companies fail to give consumers an easy way to consume media.
With music for me I can go and buy a cd and rip it and put it on any of my devices, I can buy digital music and burn it to a cd legally. But I cannot buy a movie and rip it. Because it's filled with copy protection, and it's not even working it's just a big pain because of that. Similar things have happened in games with ubisoft and their always online BS. You need to be connected to their servers all the time even though you are playing single player, internet offline and you want to play? bad luck mate. Valve is the company that I would have solved the problem the best with Steam, it's just so easy to buy games and play them afterwards.
But at least some smart people are coming along and are giving the big media companies easy ways to solve the problem, with music there is now companies like Spotify, Rdio and Pandora that has solved the problem with streaming. You pay a monthly subscription or have ads, You have access to millions of songs with the click of a button. in movies Netflix has done the same thing, you pay a monthly subscription and have access to thousands of movies. TV shows there's Hulu which does the same.

My thoughts on it all is that the companies will have to adapt yet again to the way the internet has changed technology, currently they are failing to do so really. Having 3rd party companies come in and save their asses.

Also their bullshit about billions of $ lost to piracy is bullshit, you cannot measure how much is really lost. As you have no way of knowing if the person downloading would also have bought the thing the person downloaded.

 

[Laurens]

The problem is people think that because something is expensive they have the right to own it for free, which is stupid.

I agree, however it does make sense of the problem in some respects. Piracy is a problem because products are expensive and people using the above logic to justify getting it for free.

 

[australopithecus]

Agreed, which is why what is charged for music, movies or software is absolutely extortionate. I understand why people do it, I just think the entitlement people think they have is unwarranted.

 

[Laurens]

Agreed, which is why what is charged for music, movies or software is absolutely extortionate. I understand why people do it, I just think the entitlement people think they have is unwarranted.

Indeed, and one only has to apply the same logic to something you can't pirate, say a Porsche and the logical flaws become even more apparent.

This Porsche is way too expensive for my tastes, therefore I'm going to take one for free...

 

[bluejatheist]

I really just stick to iTunes, Netflix and buying my console games. If I can't afford it I don't get to have it. If we were talking about unreasonably overpriced bread and water in a famine-ridden area, I'd be apathetic to theft. Otherwise pro-piracy arguments I hear stay limited to a general "Fuck corporations they charge too much, rage rage rage yada yada." They don't really convince that much.

 

[CEbbesen]

I really just stick to iTunes, Netflix and buying my console games. If I can't afford it I don't get to have it. If we were talking about unreasonably overpriced bread and water in a famine-ridden area, I'd be apathetic to theft. Otherwise pro-piracy arguments I hear stay limited to a general "Fuck corporations they charge too much, rage rage rage yada yada." They don't really convince that much.

Yea, the overpriced argument isn't really that valid. I live in Denmark we have to pay 100$+ for a new console game, but we can just order from anywhere else inside the EU and get a lower price

 

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

The only response to Piracy is to raise the quality and to lower the price so that some materials can be utilized without you having to take a loan out - like Photoshop - and that people are able to distribute media with it to a certain number of people.

Let's say that another game calls out called CAWADOODY: SCREAMING INTERNET KIDS and I bought it. Then, after I played it, I realized that the game's online multiplayer sucked but the storyline was decent.
The next game: CAWADOODY: SCREAMING INTERNET KIDS II comes out for it's "hailed Multiplayer performence" (the problem with the first game wasn't the Muliplayer itself more than it was the multiplayer audiance of perpetual 12-year-olds screaming through the microphone and swearing worse than a Sailor). Interested, I buy it. However, this game's Engine is the exact same as the first game - though the storyline is fairly decent, the Multiplayer still sucks balls.
They then come out with CAWADOODY: KIDS MAY CRY, the final chapter to the "series."

I'm not going to fucking pay for the same game with a bit of new content and a massive 12-year-old child/autistic adult Multiplayer fanbase. I'm going to pirate it, play the storymode, and wrap up the only thing I considered decent about the game.

Or I would do it if something is ridiculously high priced and has so much hype around it that I'm not going to be able to touch it, or if I consider it to be a shitty idea for a movie. Or if I can't find it anymore.
Examples include: Avengers (18 dollar movie ticket + tax + 40 minute lines = I'll see it later in better quality), Battleship (I got to see it for free on Base the other day, but it was a gods-awful thing to make a movie after the game "Battleship" - what's next? Chutes and Ladders?), any S.C. James Bond movies (can't find that shit anymore), Ed Edd n' Eddy series, Elfen Lied, etc.

Just a note:
They say "You wouldn't steal a car" -
they're right. Stealing implies that the material asset of another object is there and I am forgoing it from their posession in favor of having said material object in my own posession.

But if I had a 3D printer and if we tossed all contradictory problems such as wiring/materials/etc. out the window, then I would damned well download a car and print one out. And I can buy parts from other people and build the car myself - so what's the difference between this and me being given the parts from somebody else?

 

[televator]

I really just stick to iTunes, Netflix and buying my console games. If I can't afford it I don't get to have it. If we were talking about unreasonably overpriced bread and water in a famine-ridden area, I'd be apathetic to theft. Otherwise pro-piracy arguments I hear stay limited to a general "Fuck corporations they charge too much, rage rage rage yada yada." They don't really convince that much.

What would you say then about a program that would help one pay for bread and water, but is far too expensive to acquire legally? I have personal experience with this as well. Even as I started studying in the drafting field, teachers often gave us work to finish at home. However, the means by which a bunch of poor students would do so was ambiguously explained with a wink and an nod.

 

[bluejatheist]

What would you say then about a program that would help one pay for bread and water, but is far too expensive to acquire legally? I have personal experience with this as well. Even as I started studying in the drafting field, teachers often gave us work to finish at home. However, the means by which a bunch of poor students would do so was ambiguously explained with a wink and an nod.

My statement goes only as far as the famine-afflicted example. Outside of that isn't much different though, all I can say is good luck with that and try not to get caught.

 

[televator]

What would you say then about a program that would help one pay for bread and water, but is far too expensive to acquire legally? I have personal experience with this as well. Even as I started studying in the drafting field, teachers often gave us work to finish at home. However, the means by which a bunch of poor students would do so was ambiguously explained with a wink and an nod.

My statement goes only as far as the famine-afflicted example. Outside of that isn't much different though, all I can say is good luck with that and try not to get caught.

That's a bit contradicting isn't it? To say it isn't much different from what you said earlier and yet passively validate with a "good luck with that" under the same breath?

 

[bluejatheist]

The only response to Piracy is to raise the quality and to lower the price so that some materials can be utilized without you having to take a loan out - like Photoshop - and that people are able to distribute media with it to a certain number of people.

The limited choice of responses to piracy is the only reason it happens so prolifically. The moment it were to become easy to prosecute those who pirate will be the moment the vast majority of them make themselves scarce, and the thefts reduced to those who have the will or means to take the risk.

And no, the likely response to piracy will probably be more intrusive legislation, the anon-protest movements will only go so far when competing with multiple corporations with well funded lawyers and lobbyists, in a country with a significant number of politicians that love capitalism and hate protesters that aren't Tea Partiers, and populated by voting-age people who don't know what "SOPA" even means. Either the businesses that produce such media gain the legal pull to regulate their internet products, or they will find alternative ways to make that money, perhaps advertising. I could see an increase in blatant product placement in games and such, even more so than it is now, by companies if they find it necessary to make their money. Nothing whatsoever about the mainstream media industries is charitable, if you hurt their source of money they will either find a way to sic lawyers on you or they make changes to ensure they get money- changes that you may not like.

Yap on about why you do it; either way it will have consequences which may be good, but as with most everything in life, will most likely be for the worse.