Is piracy wrong?

[djcarlos]

Yes or no?

Simple.

[woody.cool]

No!

[Tony Coles]

Obviously yes, but for retro stuff it's no worse than littering.

[Cornelius]

Yes.

[woody.cool]

Yes.

Well I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it!

[SirClive]

It's not that simple.

[SirClive]

Piracy for profit = wrong
buying pirated stuff = wrong
Piracy to avoid paying for something = wrong
Piracy outside of those seems OK to me.

[Dudley]

Yeah I can't answer that.

For anyone to say no, they have to honestly be able to say the following (in the UK)

They have never backed up a CD they own to an ipod or PC.

They have never recorded a program off TV to a VCR, DVDR or computer, or used any timeshifting features.

(and more debatably) They have never not watched every single ad on a commercial station during a program they've watched.

The top 2 are 100% illegal in the UK, the content providers want number 3 to be and the actual "loss" to the company is the same as casual copying.

[TMR]

That depends on too many factors to be a yes/no answer; downloading a disk or tape image of a twenty year old game that hasn't specifically been cleared for free web-based distribution is piracy, making a duplicate of a tape or disk you already own that has broken is as well; check the inlays on most cassette-based games, there's a note about any duplication of the contents (as well as lending, hiring or broadcasting) being prohibited.

Some people even argue that piracy is what lead to the success of certain platforms over others; would the Spectrum or C64 have sold half as many units if people couldn't get a ready made pirated games collection after spending all that dosh on the machine? Same for the Amiga and ST and then the PC, as well as quite a few of the CD-based games consoles - the N64's downfall has sometimess partially been attributed to it's being cartridge-based whilst the competition had CD drives.

[merman]

Make them walk the plank and take away their sails

[MRMIdAS]

Grey area for me.

I buy lots of retro stuff, and will continue buying said stuff, however, i have quite a few ROMS, technicaly illegal, but where the hell am I going to find tattoo assassins?

I also own thrill kill.

It's TECHNICALY illegal, however, it's never been released, so it's not like I can buy it.

however, piracy just because the games are cheaper is wrong.

[CrookedMouth]

It's funny how the term "Piracy" makes it sound adventurous. Anyway it's my belief that the people who download stuff off the internet, most likely weren't going to buy it anyway. You think that Joe Shmoe Pirate would cough up $600+ for Photoshop if he couldn't download it? I think he would just use GIMP, which is free and robust also.
TES 4:Oblivion had only a DVD check to deter the "evil" pirates. A no-dvd crack and a couple minutes of copying was all it would take, yet even the PC version had record sales and was a top-seller in 2006.
I'm not making excuses or saying that pirating software is completely cool, I just believe that it's impact on the industry is negligible. Let them feel they're getting all these awesome programs for free, when in actuality they are just getting full hard drives of crap they will never use.


http://gprime.net/flash.php/youareapirate

[psj3809]

I dont copy/download any PC games, i know where i could get them from but i feel uneasy about it and i buy them all.

Do i feel guilty playing 25 year old roms for the Speccy ? Nope, you could say its 'illegal' as its someone elses software and i dont have permission, do i feel bad about that though, hell no

[Dudley]

TES 4:Oblivion had only a DVD check to deter the "evil" pirates. A no-dvd crack and a couple minutes of copying was all it would take, yet even the PC version had record sales and was a top-seller in 2006.

This is a damned important point.

Through newsgroup searching for a TV show I discovered a Sarah McLachlan remix album called "Bloom". I listened to it a few times since I'd enjoyed the Delerium single "Silence" on which she featured an went to HMV to buy it.

I found it there £13 on import, steep but acceptable for an album I know I'll listen to a lot. Then I discovered it was a "protected CD" and if I bought it, I could never play it anywhere except my car, which is the only "normal" cd player I even have.

So I didn't buy it.

Without copy protection I would have. No question. The same goes for "Afterglow" from the which the original versions of most of these songs are taken. Said CD was £10 and copy protected, so I didn't buy that either.

That's a genuine loss of money, not through piracy but actually through a lack of piracy. Without piracy I probably wouldn't have discovered either album. The copy protection designed to stop piracy not only failed since as noted I downloaded it just fine, but actively cost them 2 album sales.

Some good came of it though, I bought Afterglow from Oxfam for £3.99 instead. At that price the restriction doesn't matter to me so much and I'll just play my MP3s (of both that and Bloom) at home.

[Antiriad2097]

Add to that list all the gamers that actively vetoe any disc featuring certain other copy protection measures.

I can understand copy protection on games, annoying as it may be.

I can't understand copy protection on audio CDs. Line out. Line In. Copy protection removed.