Piracy (copyright infringement)

[Vestras]

All in all I don't think software companies care that much about piracy. A company such as Adobe has a high price for their software, but companies have to buy the software in order to stay legal. They get much more money from companies than private people.

 

[Genkora]

Hey man, do you really think you are costing Apple or any other company $1 of bandwidth every time you download a song? I mean, that's all you pay for when you buy music digitally, bandwidth costs. Honestly, I'm pretty sure they are all making a killing selling virtually nothing (something?). Meh, I know of a site that offers tons of free downloads and doesn't require any sort of membership, and so far all the files I have downloaded are virus free. They have one of those BS notices saying owning the songs you download for more than a day is illegal; it's BS because it's illegal the moment you download it, not a day after, unless they have a deal with the bands or something I'm not aware of.

Look at video game emulation, I hear all the time that it is legal to have roms of games you own. Uh, no it isn't, copyright laws stop you from making or owning copies (that weren't created legally, aka, in a factory), let alone distributing them. Even old stuff marked as abandonware is illegal, like NES, because it isn't actually abandonware, they still own the rights, they just don't make the games anymore. Is that going to stop me from emulating my favorite nes, snes, n64, sega genesis, etc. games? No, because I can't easily get them anywhere else (sorry, I believe this thread is mostly about music, but this is a good example here).

I'm sure many of you don't even realize it is illegal to rip a CD onto your computer. Copyright is exactly as it sounds, if you don't have the right to make copies, you can't legally do so. But like someone mentioned, no one really cares.

Also there is fair use where you can take bits and pieces of stuff or change the whole thing into something different like what Weird Al does, but that's another story.

All in all, I think it's alright as long as it doesn't get out of proportion, musicians aren't losing much as of right now.

 

[tom_mai78101]

Actually, if you don't let anyone know you're downloading something illegal, no one's really going to care at all.

And so, this digital rights, copyrights, etc., is really just a virtual conscience. On the surface, it doesn't exist. It's only a specific binary code packed into some megabytes for your entertainment.

 

[Genkora]

Am I a man? Or a butterfly dreaming I am a man? Actually, lets keep the metaphysics out of this, the tree still makes a sound even if no one is around to hear it, tom_mai78101.

 

[tooltiperror]

Can people all stop with the 'these are only byes'? No, they are not only bytes, they are carefully scripted hundreds of thousands of words.

 

[Cornface]

I can't pay for all the music I want to listen to, all the games I want to play, all the movies I want to watch, so I download them illegally. Whenever that is wrong or right, I can't say.

 

[Lambda_drive]

Can people all stop with the 'these are only byes'? No, they are not only bytes, they are carefully scripted hundreds of thousands of words.

There's a word for that, Intellectual property.

 

[Vestras]

I can understand those people saying that a huge program is only an array of bits and bytes - while it is, it is also so much more than that. I think the people saying that have never created a bigger program (I have)
The application I'm developing is somewhat big - 200000 lines of code - I have used 1,5 year developing it. So while what the user gets is bits and bytes, what the developer has is so much more than that. This means that it isn't the executable you pay for, rather you pay for a programmer sitting day in day out writing stupid letters and weird characters and fixing lame issues. I'm in the situation. Fixing issues sucks. There's a reason big software costs a lot. My app is maybe 1/8 the size of Photoshop, so the number of programmers working on Photoshop is huge (also they can't afford to spend 1,5 year on each release)

So while the prices indeed are huge, there is a reason for it. But all humans have the same problem - they don't know what other people are going through unless they've tried it themselves. That's how it is.

 

[Zakyath]

"I wouldn't steal a car, but I would download one if I could"

Piracy is disrespect. Most people doesn't care that others work their asses of for some things. As long as risk of being caught isn't too big, everything is fine. People can rationalize all they want, but when it all comes around this is what it is all about. This, or either unknowledge in such an extent that they don't understand the consequences of their actions.

 

[NightShade]

Normally pirated versions of things are worse or hard to use, so I use them as a sort of demo. If I liked the first season of a tv show, but bad quality really detracted from my enjoyment, I will buy the second season. If I really disliked the show though, I won't spend any money to keep it going or to reward the makers (and I'll stop watching it). I find no real moral problems with what I am doing.

 

[ElderKingpin]

if you think thats what the quality of pirated things are, you must be new to the game. Pirated games are done almost by serious people that seriously cracked the program to bring it to a person. Its not a "demo" its a fully functional free version of a game.

Not even games. you can get adobe photoshop, flash, etc for free through pirated ways.

 

[NightShade]

It is very hard to find a pirated app that you can just download and run. Especially since I use a mac, and only like 0.01% of the apps out there run on a mac, so my pickings are slimmed. And multiplayer always gets messed up.

 

[ElderKingpin]

you didnt mention a mac. Although the same thing applies to iphone apps too.

Piracy has become a serious issue.

 

[Slapshot136]

I think piracy is getting worse because of anti-piracy practices (such as only being able to play when you have internet and server X is up, with no such restrictions from a pirated version of the same program)

be it right or wrong is a grey area that I can't comment on as a whole

 

[NightShade]

^ I agree. It's ironic, blizzard makes it's games harder to pirate, and I feel more like pirating them.

 

[ElderKingpin]

everyone uses a CD-key for their games. Blizzard isnt anything special. Since they made it so CD-keys cant be used on battle.net at the same time, it just kills a big part of the game, the mod features.

I think people will be less prone to pirate a game when their friends bought it, which is why WC3 hasnt been big on pirating (as far as i know) it was such a revolutionizing game that people bought it for real.

 

[tooltiperror]

CD-Keys are only valuable if you want them, like most things. I, personally, will be joining the SC2 modding community, and I will not be purchasing the game. It's just not important to me to play the maps I create, or get them from other people. When the Garena of SC2 comes along, I may play that.

 

[DrStyles]

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[The Helper]

This is what the forum thought about software piracy in 2010. Compare to today?