Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
Avoozl

"Piracy crackdown misses the real crime"

Recommended Posts

The author of the article is well informed. Offer your goods in digital fromat for a reasonable price and people will buy them - iTunes, XBLA/PSN and many other things prove this, as everything they offer could be pirated with ease, yet millions of dollars are flowing in.

The last few years have been a constant ploy by the Australian government to fuck the people. "It didn't work in America, but oh well, who gives a shit" seems to be the policy on everything.

Share this post


Link to post

A conservative government putting the interests of its corporate paymasters ahead of those of the electorate - how unusual!

Share this post


Link to post

I know it's painfully typical GreyGhost, and we've all heard hundreds of examples of crap like this hundreds of times before to the point where it's actually become a bore, but what irks me is that they only see the short term gains rather than the long term consequences. They could fuel their greed for many more years, and fuel their children's children's greed by making changes that have benefits for the small, everyday people like us.

The conclusion I've come to is they either don't give any semblance of a fuck for the future generations (which is just weird and destructive - do all these people have mental disorders?) or they are ignorant by choice and just like the dollar signs they see right in front of them too much to be bothered to think about it.

A house lasts longer with a strong foundation!

Share this post


Link to post

Nothing new here.

They just think by restricting access they might get more people to pay - when in reality the exact opposite will happen.

Why pay insane amounts of money for a technically crippled product when you can get a pirated version without those limits for free?

This is never going to work and so far every anti-piracy legislation has failed for this precise reason.

Take one guess why downloadable music has only become a viable business after DRM was scrapped...

Share this post


Link to post

Let alone that puny, feeble software pirates are easier to arrest and put up less resistance than hardened criminals that can actually fight back....

Share this post


Link to post
Doomkid said:

The author of the article is well informed. Offer your goods in digital fromat for a reasonable price and people will buy them - iTunes, XBLA/PSN and many other things prove this, as everything they offer could be pirated with ease, yet millions of dollars are flowing in.

The last few years have been a constant ploy by the Australian government to fuck the people. "It didn't work in America, but oh well, who gives a shit" seems to be the policy on everything.


My gf just pirates. She has the money and the credit cards. She just refuses to pay for anything online. Even when Comcast emails her to stop torrenting, she found ways around things.

A really great way around things is the library that just has free everything. Then you make a copy.

Share this post


Link to post

Here's what I find amusing about how piracy is treated. I have a Netflix subscription. I have cable. And yet, I still occasionally pirate. It's not that I don't wanna pay for things. If it were simply about the money, then I wouldn't even bother having a Netflix or cable subscription. What's so hard to understand about that? Why do studios never ask themselves, "Why would someone who's clearly willing to legally pay for access to content pirate anyway?"

Share this post


Link to post

@Geo
unfortunately Geo, this whole "fuck it, I'm not gonna pay for it" mentality is the cause of a lot of the problems. Not saying your girlfriend is like that, but my #1 pet peeve when it comes to piracy is when a lot of "brave" kids act like stealing music or games is what will make a free open society and being asked to pay for it is oppressive. They work so hard to try to justify it, it's almost pathetic. It's why we have all this unnecessary DRM in games and software. God, Just at least stop lying to yourself and admit this is stealing.

Share this post


Link to post
reality 2.0 said:

@Geo
unfortunately Geo, this whole "fuck it, I'm not gonna pay for it" mentality is the cause of a lot of the problems. Not saying your girlfriend is like that, but my #1 pet peeve when it comes to piracy is when a lot of "brave" kids act like stealing music or games is what will make a free open society and being asked to pay for it is oppressive. They work so hard to try to justify it, it's almost pathetic. It's why we have all this unnecessary DRM in games and software. God, Just at least stop lying to yourself and admit this is stealing.


In her case, she doesn't want to give credit cards online and really with Netflix, Redbox, so many movie channels, she's already shelling out far more than I'm okay with. She would torrent, but there are movie sites that somehow the movie sites don't count as torrents and Comcast doesn't feel they're illegal.

I have pirated games in the past back in the 56K modem era, but I'd buy the games I liked. I would have never played Dungeon Keeper or Morrowind if it weren't for piracy, now I own them both in physical copy and Steam and GOTY editions. There are other games too, but if people don't have the money or the credit card, they'll just pirate.

I'd pirate music bootlegs and the site I went to NYack or whatever it was got snared by the RIAA and fined $10,000 per CD they had up. It was some high school site that gave students free FTP space. It had a few hundred CDs up.

Share this post


Link to post
reality 2.0 said:

Just at least stop lying to yourself and admit this is stealing.

Actually, it's unauthorized duplication.

Share this post


Link to post
GreyGhost said:

Actually, it's unauthorized duplication.


Or proletarian expropriation.

Share this post


Link to post
Maes said:

Or proletarian expropriation.

* Quasar gets out his red flag of the revolution and waves it around

Share this post


Link to post

You know, if we're gonna talk fairly about piracy while still admitting the criminal element, it's more like stealing McDonald's secret recipe for a quarter pounder, rather than walking into McDonald's and taking a quarter pounder without paying. I'm not gonna deny that taking the secret recipe is technically wrong, but I don't see it as a real issue unless you start trying to sell your own quarter pounders - cooking 'em up for dinner occasionally isn't remotely on the level of actually trying to make a profit from them.

Share this post


Link to post

Too be fair, the Quarter Pounder's secret is public knowledge. It doesn't take much effort to cook up literal shit and throw in between some buns with lots of salt.

Share this post


Link to post
Clonehunter said:

Too be fair, the Quarter Pounder's secret is public knowledge. It doesn't take much effort to cook up literal shit and throw in between some buns with lots of salt.

And it doesn't take much effort to light a dog turd on fire and post it to youtube, yet for some reason I keep getting flagged for ripping off Michael Bay.

Share this post


Link to post
TimeOfDeath said:

Anyone who thinks pirating is ok and tries to justify it is fucked in the head.







seriously though I think I side with Graf in that it's largely about accessibility to me. I'm lazy, I think most people are lazy, if the path of least resistance to obtain a song/movie/whatever costs a couple bucks, I'll roll with it. If it's a pain in the ass to get a weirdly-formatted subpar-quality DRM-protected nightmare then I'll probably steal it. Bits were born free, and to win freedom is their destiny!!

Share this post


Link to post
TimeOfDeath said:

Anyone who thinks pirating is ok and tries to justify it is fucked in the head.


Is there a witty retort to this pic yet?



Also, for some reason this reminded me of a scene in an Italian movie (Amici Miei) where somebody's shit is literally stolen.

Share this post


Link to post
TimeOfDeath said:

Anyone who thinks pirating is ok and tries to justify it is fucked in the head.



Pirating is certainly not ok, but the industry is doing their best to encourage it even from people who might actually pay for stuff.

True, there's always those who wouldn't pay for anything but they wouldn't buy the stuff anyway, DRM or not. Trying to put up a hopeless fight against these cheapskates while at the same time alienating all potential customers with the countermeasures cannot and will not solve the problem, it can never increase revenues.

Share this post


Link to post

Maes, I can think of one retort - it'd suck if you were gonna sell your car to someone, but then the next morning you found out they snuck over in the middle of the night and copied your car. Oh sure, they didn't technically steal anything, but now you can't sell your car.

Share this post


Link to post
TimeOfDeath said:

Anyone who thinks pirating is ok and tries to justify it is fucked in the head.


A lot of bands I followed lately straight up endorses pirating, use it as a tool to spread the word about themselves. Sure, maybe their album sales won't be all that huge, but their main income comes from touring anyway, so in the end it will be beneficial for them.

Share this post


Link to post
geekmarine said:

Maes, I can think of one retort - it'd suck if you were gonna sell your car to someone, but then the next morning you found out they snuck over in the middle of the night and copied your car. Oh sure, they didn't technically steal anything, but now you can't sell your car.


Too simplistic -if it was so easy to copy something so complex and resource-intensive as a car, I would probably not make much money by selling it to begin with. Crap, I'd copy myself a new one right away!

They only case this could ever work with a car is if someone manages to pass off a reproduction/replica car as the real thing and sells it to someone who's gullible enough AND loaded with cash, willing to pay a ridiculous premium.

A better example would be perhaps counterfeit art (the kind that would be auctioned at Sothesby, to be clear), but that's on a whole other level than copying a CD with some trashy pop songs or a DVD of a second-rate movie.

Share this post


Link to post

It's complex and resource-intensive to make a movie, too, and yet it's incredibly easy to copy it once its been made. That's kind of my point. I understand the position of the execs who are like, "Dammit, we spent all this money to make the movie, now people are seeing it for free!" At the same time, obviously plenty of people still legally pay for the media they consume. Just saying, I can understand the outrage, even if I don't always agree with it. Cutting into their ability to sell something is understandably annoying, even if it is just a sign that the way we do business needs to change.

Share this post


Link to post
geekmarine said:

It's complex and resource-intensive to make a movie, too, and yet it's incredibly easy to copy it once its been made. That's kind of my point.


The difference is that a car is a tangible product whose material nature and functionality is important, and thus there are no "shortcuts" for getting a functional one (save of buying a used car or steailng one, of course).

But with a movie, as with music and software, it's hard for the consumer to relate to the development/creation costs behind it, because the viewer/consumer/user is not actually buying or leasing the sets, cameras, actors, extras, technicians, programmers etc. but only gets a representation of their finished work, which perhaps makes the concept of "theft" harder to associate with piracy.

In simpler words: a car can be stolen because it's material, "it's there", you can put your hand on it etc.

But an abstract concept like a movie, a sound reproduction, a software? If it has not been stolen, put your hand on it. Where is it? After it has been stolen, where is it now?

Oh and about movies: in the early days (1910s, 1920s etc.) there virtually was no piracy, because the technology to make them and even to project them was not affordable. Nickelodeons were cheap, but they also were the only place where you could technically watch movies! The problems with piracy only began when consumer recordable media and formats appeared.

Share this post


Link to post
geekmarine said:

At the same time, obviously plenty of people still legally pay for the media they consume.

It's true. I dont think an elderly lady would know how to even torent a movie, let alone pirate it.

Share this post


Link to post

The minority of people who download media never intended to pay for it, regardless. I don't have a TV. I watch the odd show of interest on video streaming sites. If all those sites were to be shutdown, I still wouldn't invest in cable - I'll go without. They're being cunts to their consumer base for a small minority of potential profits they probably wouldn't have gained if the convenience on online piracy wasn't around. That's the thing, they are assuming the content being downloaded would have been purchased if given no free distribution.

Share this post


Link to post
Maes said:

Is there a witty retort to this pic yet?

That's just another attempt to make pirates not feel bad. The point is that they gain full access to something without paying for something that costs money, when the obvious alternative is to just not download/upload something that costs money if you're not going to pay for it.

j4rio said:

A lot of bands I followed lately straight up endorses pirating, use it as a tool to spread the word about themselves. Sure, maybe their album sales won't be all that huge, but their main income comes from touring anyway, so in the end it will be beneficial for them.

If those bands own the rights to their music and endorse the pirating of it, then I don't think that's piracy because they're giving permission to download it for free and share it. If there's a record label involved who has a piece of the action and is against giving the music away for free, then those bands are basically slapping the record label in the face.

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×