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General discussionThe great piracy debate!(273 posts)(273 posts)
(273 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted February 04, 2017
I'm certainly not pro piracy (in so much as a certain subset of people who will openly admit to it seem to believe that they are entitled to every game, book, song and movie ever released for free) but I don't think it's actually inherently bad for the people whose product is pirated.

Many of the bands I love the first time I heard them was on a CD copied from a friend, if I like the band I will go on to buy more of their CDs, maybe see them in concert and whatever 'loss' there may have been from the original copy is made up for.

As for abandonware, if a game is truly abandoned and unavailable then I don't see a huge issue with it... but as we well know here few things are really abandoned and may well return to sale at some point.

I do really have an issue with people who profit or try to profit from piracy (like selling copied CDs) as I think that's far worse, particularly if they pretend they are genuine and the original creators are somehow being paid for it.

As for copyright... I don't think there is anything particularly wrong with our current system. If I write a book and create a world I don't want anyone to be able to start writing books and making movies about my characters.
Admittedly 70 years after death is maybe a little long, but if you have kids and want to leave them a legacy that's what it does... if you started a business instead of writing a successful novel your family could continue to profit from that after your death, so why should authors or other creative people be punished in this regard?
Posted February 04, 2017
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adaliabooks: if you started a business instead of writing a successful novel your family could continue to profit from that after your death, so why should authors or other creative people be punished in this regard?
There is a difference here:

In the case of a business, the business still needs to do actual work to continue generating money. For example, if the business is a farm, the farm needs to keep producing food, which takes effort, in order to continue generating revenue and hence profit.

In the case of a creative work, once the work is done, the cost of producing more of the work is 0 in today's world. In this case, the work would be essentially providing profit for 0 additional effort. The way I see it, once the work is done and the creator has made a reasonable amount of money off it, there is no more point in allowing the creator to profit off nothing.

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adaliabooks: If I write a book and create a world I don't want anyone to be able to start writing books and making movies about my characters.
Why not? Other people writing books/making movies off your characters can take them into new and creative directions that you might never have envisioned yourself.
Post edited February 04, 2017 by dtgreene
Posted February 04, 2017
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adaliabooks: if you started a business instead of writing a successful novel your family could continue to profit from that after your death, so why should authors or other creative people be punished in this regard?
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dtgreene: There is a difference here:

In the case of a business, the business still needs to do actual work to continue generating money. For example, if the business is a farm, the farm needs to keep producing food, which takes effort, in order to continue generating revenue and hence profit.

In the case of a creative work, once the work is done, the cost of producing more of the work is 0 in today's world. In this case, the work would be essentially providing profit for 0 additional effort. The way I see it, once the work is done and the creator has made a reasonable amount of money off it, there is no more point in allowing the creator to profit off nothing.
The way I see it it still makes someone a thief. What about studios who lost money making a game? Why should anyone have a right to just take and consume creative work for free? Or decide who has made too much money off their works? How is it that the original author/developer is "making money for nothing"? Didn't they spend the tireless hours making the piece of entertainment which you are now consuming? I just don't get the world some of you live in your heads that justify this. If the current copyright laws are too long, shouldn't it be up to the author to decide that and release it to the public domain if they wish? Why should abandonware sites, distributing illegal copies of games, be able to profit off that because of the ad revenue from clicks? And in doing so, saturating the market with the developers free product that some people come to legitimate retailers like GoG and accuse them of trying to profit from "free software". That in itself should tell you there is something wrong here.

All I see are people who somehow think they are "entitled" to own everything for free if they wish it. And arguing the case because of how easy it is to duplicate, it somehow becomes less wrong.
Post edited February 04, 2017 by RWarehall
Posted February 04, 2017
Yawn, piracy discussions are so worthless. Everyone has an opinion, everyone's right and wrong at the same time. Actually, as far as opinions go, there is no right or wrong. So what is the point of arguing? You argue until you get tired of it and nothing changes. Everyone still has a wrong opinion.
Post edited February 04, 2017 by clarry
Posted February 04, 2017
I think you're really asking a question of legal defensibility vs. moral defensibility vs. practical defensibility.

Legally, all abandonware is piracy, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that major publishers, developers, film studios and record labels have considerable sway in how copyright laws and conventions are forged, users less so.

In practical terms, while all abandonware is technically "piracy", rights holders do have to weigh up the realism and gains from prosecuting someone for downloading a 25-year-old game that, for various reasons, can no longer be licensed for future sale. Also many games - especially "bedroom coded" games from the 1980s (and in the future, also bedroom-coded PC indie games) will fall into legal limbo in the future with no clear legal successor (or at least legal successors who really don't give much of a fuck and probably don't know that they own these rights).

In moral terms, well, as clarry says, that's where the meat of this debate will really lie, won't it?
Posted February 04, 2017
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eksasol: I think with GOG and things like Virtual Console, 'abandonware' has been less relied upon or at least sidelined. There are still the issues of titles stuck in legal limbo. It tends to be more difficult with PC, but if the console makers are smart they can make more money from this than they are now. Nintendo can make a Netflix model out of it, but with better value than what they're offering currently.
I can generally agree with this but I think it's also perfectly fine if kids download these titles. They don't have disposable income like I do after all. What does matter as well...do the original developers/publishers of those games profit from it? If not, I mind people downloading it even less.
Posted February 04, 2017
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dtgreene: There is a difference here:

In the case of a business, the business still needs to do actual work to continue generating money. For example, if the business is a farm, the farm needs to keep producing food, which takes effort, in order to continue generating revenue and hence profit.

In the case of a creative work, once the work is done, the cost of producing more of the work is 0 in today's world. In this case, the work would be essentially providing profit for 0 additional effort. The way I see it, once the work is done and the creator has made a reasonable amount of money off it, there is no more point in allowing the creator to profit off nothing.
I can see the point you're making, but I don't think it's really the same. You might spend 10 years completely unpaid writing a book or making a game. Unless your work is an immediate runaway success it might take another 10 years to even break even.
You might spend the first few years of a new business not making much money, but you can't really sustain that for long in many businesses and if you're not making a living out of it you probably won't be able to continue doing it.

And at the end of the day even out of copyright works are still making money, just now they make money for someone who has literally done nothing. Sure I can get the works of Shakespeare free online, but most people will buy a version from Penguin or another publisher because it's easier or more convenient.
So why should anyone else be allowed to make money off my work? Particularly if I'm not allowed.

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adaliabooks: If I write a book and create a world I don't want anyone to be able to start writing books and making movies about my characters.
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dtgreene: Why not? Other people writing books/making movies off your characters can take them into new and creative directions that you might never have envisioned yourself.
Because they're mine. Because I already have a vision for where my characters are going and how the world is developing. I don't want someone else coming in and writing a new ending to a story I've been working on for years.
Posted February 04, 2017
If you copy a floppy in Jamaica, are you then a Pirate Of The Caribbean?
Posted February 04, 2017
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AlienMind: If you copy a floppy in Jamaica, are you then a Pirate Of The Caribbean?
Lol. Btw, if you copy a floppy nowadays, you're more an archaeologist :P
Posted February 04, 2017
I also find it hard to believe one needs to pirate any game, when there are literally tens of thousands of games out there. If you cannot find something which is expressly free to play or something which is available for legal purchase to your liking, you are doing something wrong...
Posted February 04, 2017
This whole "piracy" talk is a bit of a red herring, for modern games and games on sale, yes it's a crime and should be frowned on, but if it's no longer on sale, it becomes a gray area, especially since we know from experience that the producers of games don't care about the games once they stop selling them:
Probe Entertainment ported the game to PlayStation, Saturn and DOS in 1996. However these ports were reverse engineered from a PCB of the arcade game that Taito sent them. They couldn't send the original source code as in the same year Taito announced they had lost it.
They are talking about Bubble Bobble, but there is more.

The first generation generation of Japanese Cellphone games are already lost, and there is games for PC that is "lost", so most other early systems. And if you find one of these "lost" games, and share it, you become a "pirate and thief". It's unfortunately a sad state we are in, today if the Louvre burns down, or any art museum, people will write books about how we lost "something" yet trying to "preserve" games makes you a thief.

Here is a talk that highlight the problem gamers have: https://youtu.be/HLWY7fCXUwE?t=5m12s

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phaolo: Lol. Btw, if you copy a floppy nowadays, you're more an archaeologist :P
aren't you a software conservationist?
Posted February 04, 2017
Hmm, I'm not too sure about the legal issues surrounding items that are not being sold anymore, but I guess it still is piracy?

However, I don't really think there is anything wrong with piracy of software that isn't being sold by the owner anymore. You could always get a second hand copy to play the game in question, but that is at no benefit to the creator or owner of the work financially (unless you bought it from them of course). It may be legally wrong, but I don't feel it's morally wrong.
Posted February 04, 2017
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RWarehall: As to the legality of downloading no-crack patches or even pirated games which you already own, I know there is some legal precedence which seems to allow one to bypass older DRM schemes for your own use in some jurisdictions, but I'd also find it hard to believe a judge would rule against someone who owned physical copies of everything he has downloaded. I would imagine the same would apply to downloading MP3's only of CDs one actually owns. P2P file-sharing might be an issue if used for the download, but even then, I'd imagine some leeway might be given.
I have no problems with downloading a no cd crack for a game for which I already paid but which I would only be able to use whenever steam, origin ect. allows me to do so. Considering that the SSA from steam afaik is not even valid in several countrys (including Germany) I doubt that I would even have a legal problem by doing so.

The same thing for me applies to patches adding my native language to a game I bought here on GOG. Technically this not being on GOG often means that GOG did not have the rights and therefore I am not allowed to get those files - but I also don't want to pay twice for a game or buy elsewere therefore not supporting GOG which I want to do.

Sometimes the devs/publishers do treat GOG customers different than Steam customers adding the newest version only to Steam, adding localisations only to Steam ect. I have absolutely not the slightest bit of regret if I download in this case just to get for what I have rightfully paid for. Especially when I already contacted the devs to ask them friendly before this (I am talking to you Telltale with Tales From The Borderlands!). In fact I think treating customers from different stores different is more unethical than my doing.
Posted February 04, 2017
Money doesn't smell, code doesn't violate. Its all about legal system and personal income.
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rtcvb32: True Pirates/Piracy would be scary...
Yarr! Surrender all your bytes or we will shoot you via TCP/IP !
Post edited February 04, 2017 by Lin545
Posted February 04, 2017
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RWarehall: I also find it hard to believe one needs to pirate any game, when there are literally tens of thousands of games out there. If you cannot find something which is expressly free to play or something which is available for legal purchase to your liking, you are doing something wrong...
To play Call of Duty instead of Call of Cthulhu? Thank you very much, but no.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionThe great piracy debate!(273 posts)(273 posts)
(273 posts)