I use this theory - if i didnt pirate i wouldnt buy, therefore no money for the producers either way. If i like it a lot i WILL buy it - probabnly when i wouldn't have had i not downloaded it. i know some disagree with this, but hey, its the way i do things and im not lilkely to change anytime soon - however i have taken to downloading songs from itunes rather than P2P when i want just one track
ooooh shite i have too choose very carefully so i choose neutral. because i like piracy a lot , but ok. i will choose the middle.
I fully agree i download 99% of the stuff i want illegal, but if it's good i buy it, unfortunately for the movie,game and music industry 99% of what i download turns out to be crap maybe they should think about that before claiming piracy kills the buisness.
And downloading MP3s is never the same as buying a real album. For starters there's audio quality - 128k MP3s can vary greatly in quality from my experience, from good -> badly encoded (that weird warbly effect you get with cymbals, certain guitar noises or piano solos) -> god-awful encoding -> totally borked (clicks and pops everywhere and stuff). Then there's the fact you get a nice case and cover art and stuff, and possibly even lyrics, a booklet, or even a DVD video! If there's some band I really really like I'll buy their albums. If it's just a couple of songs, or stuff that's impossibly hard to buy locally I'd just get MP3s. And as it's always been, I often copy stuff off friends too. Just not with tapes any more :-D With software it's a bit different. I'd usually try and go for the free option where possible, and with stuff like Winamp and the myriad of audio/video editing/encoding software I've found this can work well. But there's stuff that I could never ever afford with my total lack of income (being a student's great!), so I tend to, ahem, *borrow* them were possible. Though with the really uber expensive stuff I'll usually go for the old versions just so I don't feel too bad about stealing them. Plus it's easier to find keygens/cracks for them! With games, though - I'd never steal any games still available to buy new. There's enough people damaging the industry with piracy as it is. However, with games for defunct systems that have long gone out of production, I don't feel I'm hurting anyone by downloading images of these games, as long as no one's making money out of sharing these of course. So I've become some sort of ROM whore in recent years. I think ROMs/ISOs/whatever are invaluable to the games industry from a historical preservation point of view. There's so much rare/obscure old stuff that I never would have seen or heard of if it weren't for the emulation scene, and I probably would have never played an MSX game or re-lived my childhood days of my friend's bitchin' Famicom if it weren't for them. But again, like with MP3s, playing games on emulators is *never* as good as the real thing...
I always pirate music. Too many shitty artists out there getting too much money. If I wanna see a movie, I usually buy a ticket. And I always pay for games. So I chose the I save a lot of money option.
If Movie Execs and Record Companies weren't such big dick munchers, I'd hate pirates a lot more. But when the real companies don't give a shit, then I really don't give a shit.
That's a pretty black and white poll there, with not much room on either side of "1 aM 1337 w4r3x d00d!!111!!" and "OMG, TAKE THEIR HEADS!!" For example, I use Photoshop a lot, but can't afford $400 for a copy of the program. Is someone who couldn't buy it anyways negatively affecting sales? Or as Zilog Jones mentioned, MP3s. Is downloading a subpar-quality album to make sure that you wouldn't be spending $18 on a piece of shit truely a bad thing? Yeah, the record company is getting gypped because you're not impulsively buying, but you're not ending up with crap and the artist would only get 15 cents anyways... Or what about (as I have done many times) hearing MP3s from a new band whose CD you never would have bought, and going out to purchase the CD because you liked it so much?? Or how about anime. $30 for a 4-episode DVD? That's a bit of a ripoff, methinks - $7.50 per episode. That's paying the same price for 30 minutes of entertainment as you do for a two hour movie with gum under the seats and a tall fat man blocking your view. Plus, There's no way a DVD is even close to being maxed out with the kind of content they put onto it - hell, 4 episodes and some 'extras' could easily fit on a VHS tape. It's yet another reason for the studios to milk extra cash out of the consumers. Yet then again, there are times where I've bought anime DVDs (after vigorously punching myself in the crotch to have the full experience of paying $30 for 100 minutes of entertainment) because of fansubbed episodes I've seen online. I think the majority of people who pirate (the exception is MP3s, which thanks to nobrainer programs like Kazaa and it successors are in the reach of just any college fratboy whose university has a T1 line) do so more out of not being able to afford the product, or a Robin Hood-like sensibility of not wanting to further line the wallets of the few fat-cat executives that preside over most entertainment industries. I think if things were reasonably priced, with as much value as possible for that price, piracy would decrease dramatically.
Music is a grey area for me. I don't listen to a good majority of stuff people listen to today, and mostly listen to older music, so I tend to download the songs I like instead of buying a CD with a bunch of crappy songs on it. However, I do support gaming 90% of the time by buying the authentic games. Only ones I never buy are impossible to find games or translated games (Tenchi Muyo RPG that came out in Japan, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, etc). However, piracy is a double edged sword. While the concept is usually bad in the beginning, some contries don't even have the authentics in the first place (Like with games in some contries), meaning the only way they can experience it is to buy the pirates.
Yeah, I used to live in Saudi between 1990 and 1993 (excluding the Gulf War, were we were evacuated), and it was PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to buy anything that wasn't pirated! I remember the game shop I used to go to there - with PC and Amiga games they'd copy the disks for you at the counter! Cost about the equivalent at the time of about £1 stg. per disk, too! Though there probably wasn't much piracy with cartridge games at the time except for Famicom shit from China. Same went for tapes - you COULD NOT buy any real albums there! And they usually used 90 minute tapes as well, so there was either (i) a big long gap at the end of each side or (ii) some shit from another album at the end, occasionally not even anything to do with the other artist! And don't forget videos - VHS and Betamax - all pirated. A lot of the time you'd get bloody awful copies too. If you're VERY LUCKY you might get something mastered off a LaserDisc - but then it'd usually be NTSC and you'd need a multi-region VCR/TV (though most people did there anyway). But then there were the hilariously bad sneaking-a-camera-into-the-cinema recordings, with heads and all. Of course, LaserDiscs couldn't be copied (but we weren't cool enough to have a player anyway), and CD copying was hideously expensive at the time and CD-Rs (or WORMs or whatever) probably weren't even playable on standard players anyway.
Im in the middle, I guess. I have Roms, but only 3 or 4. I used to be a bad Rom kiddy a couple of years ago, but Im not anymore.
I am against all forms of it. I tried emulators before, and I didn't like them so I got rid of them. Everything I have is legit.
I pretty much agree with what seems to be the general ideology here. I pirate some things just because I cannot afford the overpriced originals. But, when something is worth my money I try to buy it (and when it reaches a decent value). A prime example of this is the FLCL boxed set I just bought....I downloaded the 6 part series ages ago....to buy a UK boxed set it would ahve cost me £80 :smt009 £80 for 6 episodes and about 10 minutes worth of extras I could get online freely (and legally) easily? No thanks. So I imported an Australian one for £40. That was including shipping too. Still a bit expensive to me, but I liked the show enough I was willing to pay that much. I don't like to pirate things....but I also dont want(or have the money) to be ripped off. The important rule I stand by though is, if I'm not going to pay the companies money for their products, I wont pay someone else to recieve a pirate version of it.
I'd buy only legitimate games.... in a perfect world. With a Mexican salary and abusive import prices, in a market that does not bring decent games "because they don't sell" - what is one to do? What, am I gonna pay the overpriced, slow and dangerous mexican mail for a mexican copy of "Macross, do you Remember Love" for the PSX, that I'm gonna pay 60 dollars for, then 40 dollars for shipping, then never getting because someone in customs wanted to hang the pretty shiny disc from their truck's rear view mirror? Fuck, no. I'm not gonna give my credit card number in Ebay. Mexican banks are corrupt as hell, and losing all my patrimony for a 2000 dollar debt just because I wanted Galaxy Fraulein Yuna Final Edition is not precisely a risk worth taking. Buy from local services like mercadolibre? I'm neither rich nor stupid enough to pay 600 dollars for a used Marty or 90 dollars for a japanese dreamcast Psychic Force 2012. I make 1400 pesos a month. That's about 120 dollars. I will be able to pay for unattainable goods once I live in the first world and have decent material available at fair prices. I'm not paying 76 dollars for PS2 games just because GamePlanet has a pretty store. Fuck those bastards, Megaman X command mission is not worth 76 dollars. I payed 36 dollars for R Type Final, 33 for Gradius V, 30 for Ace Combat 4, 30 for Metal Gear Solid Substance, 19 for Ring of Red, 19 for Arc the Lad Twilight, 20 for Grandia Xtreme, 25 for Grandia 2, 15 for Final Fantasy X, 20 for Zone of the Enders Anubis, 45 for Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter, 10 for Silpheed and 10 for Gungriffon Blaze. The black market is fair for original goods, and I pay for them gladly. But original PSX games are impossible to find. So I have a little briefcase filled with mostly silver copies, and also some cheap CDrs. It's better than not playing at all. One day, I will afford Silent Bomber, and All the good PSX RPGs and even stupid soccer games. Right now, I cannot fight the market, unfair prices, third world salaries and the unattainability of legitimate products. I pirate. And I'm proud.
I voted for the 2nd option but now that I think of it I should really vote for the 3rd :-D No one here can vote the 1st option "F**k them! They are the No.1 l00zerz in the world!!" Because if they did they'd be the biggest hypocrite here. Everyone owns something not original. Yakumo
yeah like my bootleg version of the Depeche Mode album Exciter i got three months before it went into the stores ;-)
I actually don't own any bootlegs. I just think that if people want to pirate certain stuff, they can.
All I've read so far is excuses. I don't understand why you guys are so open to this discussion while practically every other controversial thread is locked on sight. Piracy is nothing to exactly brag about, is it cool to own software registered to some warez group you're not even apart of?! Software prices may be unfair, but life can be horribly unfair. A lot of users seem to think they deserve X software from a software Robin Hood. I take offense to that because people do happen to live off their work, and piracy is stealing no matter how you look at it. If you're going to pirate, own up to your actions you big horse-vagina! That said, what you do in the privacy of your own home is your own business. I have no problem with anyone doing nearly anything as long as I'm oblivious. Don't get yourself reported by blabbing about it. The best pirate you can be is a crafty one, learn about what you're participating in because theres no one someone like me'd rather report than a smug novice leech BTW, while "piracy" for testing purposes is the future, sadly today it's still illegal. Everyone has their reasons for doing what they do but I'm not going to go into mine and have someone knocking on my door in 2 weeks. Also while I'm definately not one of them, I respect people who legitimately own their entire repertoire.
Kyuusaku: my windows xp machine is registred legal and i am glad for that Bootleg recordings are not illegal they are not legal they are in the greyzone and we have had this dicussion before where you exploded more than me in a rant over emulator roms. and again i am trying my best to become legal all the way.
