@OP, that holier than thou attitude is really irritating. Most people here are anti-piracy anyway, so the lecture was unnecessary.

I'd consider the unauthorized copying of private information an invasion of privacy (which is also how many laws treat it). I'd consider the use of copied passwords (or other authorization credentials) to access my personal accounts to be fraud (which is also how many laws treat it). I wouldn't consider any of that to be theft, unless fraudulent access to my accounts was then used to deprive me of some actual property (e.g. transferring a portion of my bank balance to another account), although this theft would be in addition to the previously mentioned fraud, and would be separate from the copying of my authorization credentials.

Also, I'll second Navagon's sentiment that you really should take some time to ask questions, learn, and put your thoughts in order on all of this before going off on any further rants, as at the moment your thoughts are a bit of an ignorant mess.

GOG.com

I should have directed this towards 4chan.

Get sick and tired of people calling piracy theft when it is obviously speeding.

I seem to remember that in the old days many games stated that you could make a back up copy of the disk for personal use only to cover things such as a disk failure or damage to the original.
Copying something you bought for your own use as an emergency back up is not piracy but, now DRM prevents even this so, if your dog chews the original disk you will have to buy another.
In some cases if you change your computer hardware on a regulsr basis you will eventually have to call the company and plead for extra activations.
Piracy is illegal but DRM doesn't prevent it in many cases it has become the pirates challenge to crack each new DRM purely for its own sake.
Yet, we who pay, unlike those who steal, have to go through a bunch of hoops and solve technical problems if the DRM software doesn't like other legal software we may have on our computers.
I remember 3 years or so ago that some of my older games disks were rejected by securom (left on my system by an uninstalled game) because, (I have no idea why) they were not recognised by the DRM, all I got was the message 'please insert correct disk'. I had to spend my time researching the cause and removing securom, nervously editing the registry to complete the operation after which everything was back to normal.
I didn't ask for this piece of intrusive, disruptive software that had to be physically uninstalled long after the original had been uninstalled nor for the hassle it caused me until I discovered the cause of the problem and rectified it.
Did it prevent piracy? NO, but it did cause me considerable frustration and to waste a lot of time to get my PC working properly again.
I don't give copies of my GOG games to friends and family because, they are reasonably priced, and I believe in and support what GOG are doing.
I suspect the incidence of llegally copying GOG games is probably much lower than piracy on games with DRM because, the challenge is in cracking $50 games which are supposedly uncrackable not in just copying a GOG download that, in most cases costs, $10 or less.
Companies are getting rich from producing DRM software and it is the LEGAL purchasers who are paying for the DRM software that they neither want nor need on their PC's.
DRM does not prevent theft, we as purchasers are not only offsetting the cost of assessed revenues lost by theft but are also paying extra for software that fails to prevent it.

I'm going to skip over all your previous highly ill-informed statements and address the point that, your dictionary is indeed wrong! The legal definition of theft is the taking of a natural or legal person's property with the intent of permanently depriving them of it. You cannot take ideas or concepts away from another person and deprive them of it.

I find it funny how people say they are tired of DRM and piracy threads, yet they participate in them. :) People who are not interested in either, should not read further. You've been warned. Ok, stop right there. You are confusing "obtaining a game" with "activating a game when installing or playing it". They are not the same.

True, you have to go online and log into your GOG account in order to obtain the game for the first time. That is not really different from having to go to a retail store to buy a CD game, or a toaster.

But what matters is what happens after that. Do you have to go online and log in to your "ToastExpress"-account when you plug your brand-new toaster into the electric socket at your home for the first time, or even every time you use it? No?

Same with GOG games. After you have obtained the game for the first time, you don't need to "activate" it at any time. Hence, it has no DRM.

You mention "one-time" activation when you install the game. How about when later you want to reinstall the game many years later, either to your newer PC, or because you reinstalled Windows, or even just uninstalled the game before in order to free some space?

Suddenly, your "one-time activation" isn't anymore just "one-time". It is only that if you install the said game only once, ever. For the toaster example, it would mean you'd have to re-activate your toaster (e.g. by calling ToasterExpress, or going online) any time you unplug it from the electric socker, and want to plug it in again.


On the piracy argument, I mostly agree with you (the little I read about it), especially how stupid it is to pirate a game because you don't like the DRM. That is a slippery slope and starts to sound more like an excuse for piracy, a bit same as "I disliked the game's intro music, hence I didn't buy the game, but pirated it instead. So there, I stick it to the man!".

It is semantics to argue whether piracy is "stealing" or not. To me it is more important to think whether it is (morally) wrong, or not.

Even that is not a black-white question though. I am much more understanding to piracy when it is mostly about e.g. preserving games or media that would otherwise probably vanish to thin air, as no copyright holder seems to be interested in them anymore.

Also, I might be _a bit_ more sympathetic for a 3rd world citizen pirating a game because otherwise it would cost his whole year's salary, but only a bit. Come to think, maybe not even a bit, because nowadays there are plethora of cheap Steam sale/GOG/indie games as well for a few bucks, so there are much more different price brackets for gaming than there used to be, when all retail games would first cost the same $50. So what if you can't afford Mass Effect 3 right now, play some Fallout 1 instead!

Games are not food, but still one analogy. Stealing food is wrong. But if someone stole food for their starving children, I may be much more understanding to it. On the other hand, if the stealer insisted on stealing only prime tenderloin beef for his "starving children", I start suspecting his motives.

Even though they are mostly former "abandonware", GOG games shouldn't be pirated because someone is actively selling them (legally), and is doing work to preserve them. I see GOG's work (as well as those making emulators for dead systems and OSes) as similar saviours of art as someone who is doing restoration work for some stupid old Mona Lisa or other painting.

Forgot one point: That's because there's a good reason for them to require internet connection: otherwise it would be impossible to play them online. For single-player games, there is no such reason (other than anti-piracy).

Also, there is a reason why so many multiplayer-only games are going free-to-play model, possibly trying to milk some money from the players with micro-payments instead.

And as it happens, I have never bought any multiplayer-only game. In the past I have played e.g. Quake Team Fortress, Team Fortess Classic and Counterstrike, but IIRC they all came as freebie add-ons to the single-player games I had bought before (Quake and Half-life).

I was contemplating over buying TeamFortress 2 at some point, but then fortunately Valve made if freeware. Fortunately, because in the end it doesn't seem as interesting to me as e.g. TFC, so the money would have been mostly wasted if I had paid anything for it.

I also thought about buying World of Warcraft at some point, but I disliked its pricing model enough to perish the though.

If I ever pay for a multiplayer-only game, I'd pay less for it than most single-player games. In general, I feel single-player games are worth much more than multiplayer games, and take much more effort from the developers (enemy AI, story etc.).

Single-player game is like someone making a whole movie. Multiplayer game is like someone building a setting for a movie, and then handing out video cameras to the customers: "There, make your own damn movie, there's the set.". Ok, maybe I'm mostly thinking of online action games with which I'm more familiar, not so much MMORPGs like WOW.

That is copyright infringement and, indeed, it is not theft. However, it only applies if you are using that information for your own benefit and reproducing it in a way that makes it seem like your own, if you pirate something you are not seeking to profit from another's intellectual (a stretch for most games) property and pirates are not claiming to have created the game. We have a word for it already and I don't know why the OP doesn't use it. Pirating: it really is pirating and nothing more.

Not necessarily. Over a year ago I was visiting north Finland (Oulu) in a Radisson hotel (it was a work trip). I thought the food was quite good and no complaints about the service either, so I decided to leave a few euros over the actual price.

The waitress/cashier pretty much yelled to me (in Finnish): "Hey mister, don't forget your change! You gave too much!". I just waved back and walked to the escalators. I heard her saying something to the other waitresses "I don't know what's wrong with that man, he left too much money...". I got an impression she didn't know what to do with the extra money, just put into the register, keep it to herself, share it with other waitresses/cooks...

So, apparently at least in northern Finland tipping is sometimes unexpected, albeit I remember sometimes tipping in south Finland, but it is a bit same as telling the cashier in a grocery store or supermarket: "keep the change, good work there with the cash register!". Or do people tip e.g. their barber?

Frankly, I never even understood why only the waiters should be tipped. What if I thought the meal itself was exceptionally good? Do I tell the waiter to give some money to the cook from me, or go to the kitchen myself to hand them out and thank him for such a great meal?


Oh yeah, let's not forget the time me and my friends (workmates) received very bad service and outright abuse from a French waiter in Lyon. I sure tipped him, with an used Finnish stamp I found in my wallet. Maybe he thought it was worth something.

I could be mistaken, but doesn't that apply already to e.g. genetically-mutated crops and such? Ie. they are "copyrighted", because there has been so and so much R&D money that went into inventing a tomato that survives freezing temperatures, by adding a gene from a fish, or some such sh*t?

To me it depends if the original work required lots of money and/or research to come up. Some team coming up with the cure for cancer should benefit for their invention, at least for some years. But someone just patenting mouse triple-clicking in an user interface, something he invented one night intoxicated, probably shouldn't.

As for games, obviously they usually take quite some time and even money to develop, so they should be copyrighted IMHO.

It's not always easy of course. If it is something very useful and even important to the whole mankind, then at least only one company should not benefit from it alone, setting prices for it etc. For example, if someone made cold-fusion functional at last. Maybe the inventing team and the investors could be given some time to benefit from their invention, but after that it should probably become public domain.

One clarification though: I think many such games (allowing or even promoting making backup copies of your installation disks) had other forms of DRM, e.g. requiring you to look up the manual in the beginning of the game.

In many cases, they even tried to make it harder for you to make photo-copies of your manual, e.g. using dark brown text on black background.

I miss the Monkey Island wheel. That was copy protection done RIGHT.