Forums → WEPR → Pirating

**Attention: This is a thread discussing the morality and your views on pirating. I do not want to see any talk on where to go to pirate, or how to pirate. Nor do I want to hear about who pirates and who doesn't or what you pirate. If this happens, the thread will end up being locked, or you banned if you talk about where to pirate.**

In a day and age where the internet is the median for acquiring almost everything, I think it's appropriate to bring up a very up and coming trend: pirating. For does who don't know it, it's the act of getting anything that you would usually pay for (Music, Movies/TV Shows, Video Games, Software) online, for free, from someone.


I want to make it clear that I will not be showing anyone how or where to start pirating. I also do not condone anyone pirating anything.


Pirating in general is stealing from a company, a company that worked hard to bring a product, it cost them money to make it in hopes of selling it for more, making money. But to start, I want to differentiate pirating from stealing, because they are very different. You might hear pirating is stealing in ads but you must be weary, for this is not true. Stealing is taking something away from someone that you aren't suppose to, whereas pirating is making a copy of something that you aren't suppose to. For example, when you steal lets say a candy bar from a store, that is a physical candy bar that the store will never get back. Online, if you pirate a movie or a game, you are not physically lets say taking a game from a store, or factory, no. You are making a copy of someone else's game that they have, and they don't lose it. Unfortunately this is used as an excuse for people who pirate, saying it isn't stealing, its pirating. Although it is important to know the difference, you must understand it's still not right. In some respects, you can see is as stealing money, because they lost a potential customer. But that isn't my point. My point is that before committing such acts, you must understand what you are doing essentially, to understand what your implication is.

As I mentioned briefly, there are 4 main categories of things pirated: Movies and TV Shows, Music, Video Games, and Software. This doesn't cover everything, like books or some other stuff, but it is the main four reasons to pirate. The most popular type of pirating is music. Almost everyone downloads music, from sites or programs that I won't mention(most all of you surely know them anyways). Although popular, it does not detract from the amount of money they make. One of the most prominent reasons being quality. Quality of music downloaded from these sites are usually low, unless you know where to look. And for most people this isn't good enough for them, so they buy CDs, and get high quality. Also there has been a big scare lately surrounding illegal music downloads, like cases of people paying $50 for every song they had that was not paid for. Movies and TV shows would come next in the list in most downloaded content. This is simple to explain in that being able to watch and play shows and movies whenever you want has become a big aspect of our lives, not being chained to times set by the tv network or cinema listings. Although again, quality is low, unless you download huge 20gb files for 1080p you won't get that, and that's a lot to download. Which is why they still thrive. You can't download a movie theater, or easily and speedily download blu-ray quality.

Next is video games, I make a new paragraph for video games because although not the most downloaded, it is the most affected. Distribution of music, tv, and movies hasn't changed much because of pirating. Video games have. A lot. DRM are thrown into all games and they are getting stricter and stricter. You look at an old video game and one person could install their game on 100 PCs no trouble. But nowadays you must use a serial key to activate your game, need the CD in the drive to play, and it's also been talked about, to have to confirm your legit game online every 10 days to play. It was also seen in a new game, that if a fake key is found, that levels have invisible walls in them, so that you cannot play through it. Now even with all this, talented individuals find ways to crack through this easily without any problems. And they continue to do with no matter what. But I digress. Games cost a lot of money, ranging from 40 to 100 dollars a game, this doesn't come cheap to a gamer with new games coming out weekly. Forcing a lot of people to download, and it is becoming quite a large trend. This doesn't affect larger companies so much, they still have enormous profits, because console games are harder to crack(you need to mod your xbox/ps3, which becomes a hassle for someone who isn't well versed in doing so) and console systems can usually run the games better than most normal people's computers, so they are optimal for gaming. But small indie developers begin to struggle. Some great games are made by new and upcoming teams, but they suffer great damage because of pirating. One example is the team behind World of Goo. This is an amazing game, completely incredible and I would refer anyone to it, just absolutely splendid. And the whole world loves it. The problem? It was reported that 90% of the copies of world of goo were pirated. That means only 10% of the people paid for it, and this is a cheap game. 10$. Can you imagine how much money this small company is losing? Quite a bit, and who knows if we will ever see anything else from them.

Now lastly is software, I don't know much about software, but the biggest thing I believe is Adobe products. Now I say this, but it doesn't mean that you should go out and illegally download it, but it doesn't matter that much to them if you do. That is to say, if you are just someone who wants to use photoshop or flash to create little pictures or movies or games for yourself or your friends, in a closed community for the hell of it, it really doesn't matter. You are not a target audience. Adobe makes their products for large companies and designers alike, so that they may make great commercial products. If you plan on making things for a profit, or to put online, this becomes a different story. Because people's whose job it is to use adobe, as in companies and designers, they need real versions. And you don't know how big companies can be, full of people needing adobe products. They rake in cash, and you were never in their projected sales if you are 12 and using it for fun. With movies and music and games, if you couldn't get it free chances are you would find a way to buy it. But for adobe, if you are a kid and you see $700 adobe products you wont buy it, nor will you ever, its not worth it for what you want to do. Adobe knows this and doesn't account you into their sales estimates and what they plan to sell, so you don't matter. Also if they really cared they would make it harder to crack adobe products, because at the moment it's a joke.


Now, after all this informative chat I finally come to my point. The morality of pirating. Why you do it, why you don't, and what if you do. This part is strictly my opinion now, and I am sure you will all have your own opinions and I would lose to hear them. Hence me posting this.


When I see pirating I see three different reasons for it. Time to go through them.

1. Being greedy/lazy.
This is for people who don't want to go to the store and buy whatever, even if they can afford it and it is not much for them. This is people who want to save money by stealing it, even though they can afford it. I find this to be abominable because they cause this for their own sake of being greedy. They feel no sympathy for the people who work hard on things and lose the companies money out of laziness. This is the worst of the three, and if you are one of these people then I urge you to rethink things because you cause companies to tighten up even more, including ISPs, essentially ruining your life!

2.Pirate because can't afford.
This piratee, you might call them, cannot afford the matter at hand in the first place, so they download it. This person probably lives in a state where they use all their money to live and pay rent/bills, and is on a very tight budget. This brings up a moral question similar to "should you steal bread to feed your starving family". Although it's not exactly the same, this person is trying to live and you can't blame them for wanting nice things like movies and music like everyone else, even if they can't afford it. In a way pirating has been an modern Robin Hood to the poor and helped them out a bit, except the 1st group could be seen as someone who isn't in a financial crisis yet takes money from robin hood anyways(in a sense, if you catch my drift). And this brings me back to my adobe theory. If you couldn't and won't ever be able to afford the music/games/software/movies that you want, then you were never or will never be a client, therefore it is not a true loss to the company, and it essentially doesn't matter. Now in real life it would be different, if you could and would never be able to afford a car the company would still care if you stole it. But taking the car into pirating terms, if you couldn't or would ever be able to afford it, but made a COPY of it, then this would be a different story to the company. Because they did not lose a car, it's still there, it's just a copy, and the person couldn't afford it anyways so they never expected to sell to them, so it doesn't matter. Hopefully you can grasp what I am saying with this.

3.Pirate as a filter.
In my head, the most respectable pirating to be found. These people download everything, and whatever they truly like and enjoy will then go and actually buy it. This is the most honorable way of doing it in my opinion. An example is video games. I go to the store and buy a game, 65$, I go home and I completely HATE it. I go to the store, no refund, but they will buy it back from me! But for 15$. This is ridiculous, because truly knowing if you liked a game or not doesn't happen in a 10 minute demo, or watching someone ELSE play. Although reading reviews and watching trailers and a demo do help in decision making, you can never be too sure until you really have the game. Which makes it hard to really chose games because you could be wasting a ton of money. So the solution? These people download the games, play the entire thing. If they liked it, they will go and purchase a copy, if not, then they let the company burn, and the same principle goes for movies/music also. I personally see this as making sense. Why pay them for something you completely hated, it's a very bad system, because you pay a lot of money for this stuff. Essentially these people use pirating as a filter for good and bad stuff, then buy. When you think about it, this way only companies that please their clients will remain in business while others, who make crap, will be destined to go out of business or change their ways so that they make money, or else people will be gypped into buying it, and they will make another shitty sequel.




Now I want to make clear, although I do find that pirating doesn't need to be seen as a horrible thing, remember it's still illegal, and you shouldn't be doing it. My personal opinion is to not pirate. Make informed choices about what you are going to buy, look up your game fully, read multiple reviews, watch clips, before buying. Ask opinions of movies, tv shows, and music from a lot of people and read up on it before buying. At worst just rent your game/tv show once and go from there. But if you go into pirating I plea for you to become like #3. If you pirate, remember that they worked hard, and as long as you pay your respects to the company by paying for what you enjoy, I think it is an acceptable practice. I see it as not paying for the product, but paying them in respect for the work they put into it. Now that said, again, even if I think that #3 is a great way of doing things, I don't do it. It's illegal and I am not venturing down that road, nor should you.

Again, this is all merely opinion based. Now that you have heard my views on it. I would love you hear yours. How you feel about pirating, where your allegiance stands, etc. Generally I just want to know what you think is appropriate and what isn't. Looking forward to seeing what you guys think!

-Klaushouse

**Attention: This is a thread discussing the morality and your views on pirating. I do not want to see any talk on where to go to pirate, or how to pirate. Nor do I want to hear about who pirates and who doesn't or what you pirate. If this happens, the thread will end up being locked, or you banned if you talk about where to pirate.**