You're right, piracy is closer to trespassing than theft. The company didn't sell you a disc, they sold you an admission ticket to the shiny new theme park they just built. Even though you're allowed to come in, your admission ticket doesn't give you any rights regarding the attractions in the park; the company still determines the way they should be used.

The pirates in the park may not physically prevent the company from selling more tickets, but they do use up server resources, resulting in the paying customers waiting in line longer to ride the newest coaster. DRM started as the equivalent of getting a hand-stamp to prove you paid to get in; it has degenerated to requiring all visitors to wear clown shoes, giant novelty foam hands, and an oversized sombrero - then kicking people out if the sombrero falls off   

No. I would not tell you that I am a non-pirate if I were a pirate, and I would not tell you that I were a pirate at all.

Your post illuminates a depressing point. People who side with non-pirates are 'trolls', which I believe means people who create posts in disagreement with the general consensus. It follows that people have generally concluded piracy is legitimate, and anyone who disagrees is a 'troll'.

I am toying with an idea, and I am conflicted. While I view myself as a moral person, I also do not want to be used. While I believe piracy is wrong, I also no longer believe buying games is right. So I have a choice. I can either abandon games entirely, or I can become a pirate myself. In that case, my only defense is that I know I am immoral. But I only question the amount of guilt I would have to feel. Would it be worth it? If so, what else am I capable of? Is this a world made for pirates?

You're a troll because you post stupid shit every time someone tells you something you apparently already know is true.

Piracy fills voids, it's always filled voids, and will always fill viods. Laws are artificial factors, when they manipulate the market, they create voids. The illegal market takes up the slack at some middle point depending on the risk/reward factors. Since we've been getting royally screwed by the companies the last couple decades, the reward is pretty fucking high.

The companies are directly at fault in their own losses, assuming they even have any. The rest of the software market isn't pirated anywhere near the level the games are. They target the young and dumb, avoid going after more mature and thoughtful audiences that buy more often(notice how the really well selling games break the fucking high schooler demographic?). They release bug riddled products and then fail to support them adequately. They write multi-page licenses that aren't even mentioned at sale or anywhere on the packaging. They cover themselves against lemon laws and other legal avenues of recompense for fraudulent products with those licenses, restrict your usage far beyond that of the standard copyright laws, and give themselves legal grounds to rescind your purchase or various parts of it. The simple act of claiming that the software is licensed without stating so before purchase is outright fraud and would result in jail for any other industry.

The next idiot that says they're obviously not going to sell you a million dollar piece of software needs to read the fucking copyright act. The whole point of copyright is that your rights to copy it are retained when you sell it to someone. A license to say the same thing is what you would need if there were no such law on the books. It's really, really simple, my dog could figure it out.

The pirates may or may not be trash, but fuck feeling sorry for EA. I'd be more inclined to give them medals right now.

I ask earlier



A few posts later you pass this off as your own idea, even though that is exactly the Prisoners Dilemma I told you would crop up in your class.



Dude, you really need to pay more attention in your class. You either missed the point your lecturer was trying to make, or they are feeding you this stuff specifically so they can then run through the flaws in follow up classes and explain why its not part of modern economic theory.



..... I feel like the guy in Good Will Hunting who catches the guy in a bar plagiarising a history book, misunderstanding it and passing it off as his own idea.

The problem with some people who side with "non-pirates" is that the pollute the discussion with short-sighted mis-information and language-pollution. Which is why they often are referred to as trolls.

Example: "copyright-infringement is theft". Which is not the case, copyright infringement is copyright infringement. There is a reason that we have such nuances.

Same goes for the whole "piracy" term. Perhaps I'm old, but Piracy used to refer to people who SOLD copyright infringing materials, such as copied games and movies on floppydisks and video-tapes (which was quite normal in the '80s and early '90s). It had nothing to do with people just copying stuff for themselves.

Every week I get some Chinese guy stick his head round the door were I work and ask "DVD you want DVD yes?".

Like if I was so minded to view an illegal copy I would spend £10 on his dodgy cam-recording from the cinema rather that just download the full DVD quality rip off the net!

Even HMV will sell you the full DVD with all extras if you wait a few months for not much more than that.

Sheesh, is this still going? Really guys, anyone would think you're trying to beat a world record for the longest argument. It's pretty simple really. The companies are simply trying to blame their sales problems on pirates, and therefore they get excessive DRM to prevent pirates. This in turn annoys their customers who actually buy the game, who turn to pirates to get the game, or disable the DRM. The company makes less profit, and blames pirates, getting even 'better' DRM, and so on. In the end only the DRM companies make a profit, and pirates are still ahead.

Now I'm not saying pirating is a good thing. But when you think about it, it's the proverbial lesser of two evils. I would rather download a crack to disable DRM rather than have to wait for it authenticate the game on the internet every time, or screw around with my system files. I have bad internet connection, it only works half the time, and can take up to 10 minutes to load a page as simple as google. Now if I want to play, say, Mass Effect, there's no way in hell I want to wait 30 minutes for it to contact the server, and authenticate my game, and that's if the connection even works. So I'll download a crack to disable the authentication process, and I can now peacefully play my game. Meanwhile, the company will get bad sales because of the obsessive and frankly, fucking useless DRM and blame it on pirates. The vicious circle continues. It's only when companies actually get off their fat asses and bother to sort out their problems, make good games, and get rid of the shit DRM that the pirate problem will be solved. And even then, you'll still have pirates. You can't get rid of pirates, ban them, lock them up, torture them, even kill them, but pirates will still exist.

Basically, Pirates=Bad.
Companies wasting time with DRM=Even worse
So pirates will win.

Oh and @SlyDrivel, stop calling other countries 'Barbarians' you utter xenophobic crap. Get out of your cosy little sheltered world, take a nice step into the real world, stop deluding yourself, experience the, frankly, much better cultures and traditions of other countries and stop spouting this drivel about how the USA is superior to the 'barbarian countries'.

The racing has ended and I'm back
Most, or at least some, of my post will be off-topic:


I only said that your post made you sound like an agist, but now I really think you are one. I truly hope I had some job right now (though not on top of the already eight-hour day at the high school plus the homework, which usually leaves me one hour of free time each day). I get little money and I'd really like some free space and my own house. You can complain about all the taxes, but, in return, I could complain about that you can gain money unlike me (that I doubt you spend at all, stealing things).

You also used the Robin Hood reference. Someone already said it's 2008 now. Am I wrong or do you own a computer? Yes? Well, then you should be able to afford all the food and medical supplies. The ones Hood stealed from didn't give much or anything for their people. And does this also mean you haven't got anything from the corporations you're stealing from? Finally, the ones Robin Hood gave the stuff to were suffering and starving to death. I assume you are suffering from similar things too? No? Then goddamnit don't refer to heroes (fictional or not) to justify your crimes!

And now since this seems to never end, this will, with 90% accuracy, remain my last post in this very thread. I'll choose the "Options -> Quit -> Return to Main Menu", and leave you here to preach your religion for all you want.

This guy is right.

Rather than just tearing your comment apart I'll just revel in the fact that you wont be posting anymore instead.

PS. robin hood was a metaphor not meant to be taking directly from the mythology, but I mean sure okay what I really meant was pirates steal food and give it to the poor... yep that is exactly what I meant.

I take it you'll be the first to agree with a regressive tax rate where we tax the poor 50%, the middle incomes 30% and the rich 10% then, since if the poor can afford food that's all that matters? Anyway, come back when you understand the significance of relative poverty.

While I don't like DRM as a method of preventing piracy, it is true that a lot of people will ignore ethics and legalities and get a free copy of the software if it's more convenient to get the free copy than it is to get a legit copy. Yes, a lot of people will pay for a game if it's more convenient to pay rather than steal.

The real hardcore thieves who will never pay for anything are pretty rare. More than likely, most thieves are "common criminals" who are willing to pay if it's inconvenient to steal it.

For the most part, it does come down to convenience. And yes, many types of DRM, especially the older stuff, made it pretty convenient to be a legitimate customer. So I would agree DRM tends to make the problem worse rather than better.

Personally, I don't think that we should give up on copyright protection technology completely - I think that we should avoid the old style DRM that punishes legitimate users so much, and emphasize technologies that give benefits to legitimate customers. This is what Valve and Stardock are doing. Their online store model makes buying legitimate software very convenient for most people.



Luckily, both Steam and Impulse/SDC avoid these forms of DRM. If I remember correctly, Stardock has a very strict policy of not messing with system files.

Both Steam and Impulse/SDC allow you to play games totally offline, and assuming the authors of the games don't add their own extra DRM, neither one of them requires an Internet connection to play games.

In addition, both XP and Vista have mechanisms in place to prevent other software from messing with system files. In fact, if you leave UAC on, Vista has very strong protection against other software messing with system files.

Steam authenticates every game online whenever you try to run it. It also authenticates every third party mod that's released for free online. Meaning you can't play free third party mods (Dystopia, Zombie Master) at lans unless you've got an active internet connection (which the lans in my local area don't).

What this also means is if Steam is screwing up, my games refuse to play.

I would also like to link this. You don't own any of the games on Steam since they can be deactivated at a whim by someone at Valve.

I also thought this was the case (and was incensed by the fact that I needed internet connection every single time I wanted to play half life 2 offline), but you can fortunately disable this option to allow you to play games without connecting to steam first (although you still of course need the initial online authentication to activate the game when you first install it - not much of a problem if you've downloaded the game from an online store in the first place though ).

Yes, steam is only not a nuisance after you switch it to offline. When you go to start it up in online mode and your connection takes a shit, the fucker wont let you into anything.