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Commisar Wolfie wrote:The problem with the whole arguement of justifing pirating for demo purposes makes no sense.

1. Most games have free demos available with a little looking, also you could always rent games from gamefly or such to try them out.
2. You can sample music by using any of the free internet radio sites
3. You can watch previews and bits of movies on many sites ike youtube and such.
4. Books you can just go to any bookstore and read a chapter or two, or go to a library where they don't charge you for checking out any book. Many books will also have sample chapters available on-line.
So really any need for sample or demo purposes can be found legally online with just a little searching.

1. Not enough of them, sadly. The way of shareware has kind of gone out the window, and you can't rent computer games. There's still a few game developers who do this, but I doubt you're going to find demos for Bethesda, EA, or Blizzard games. Also, this doesn't cover the "I paid money for a product inferior to the free version of it" scenario I presented earlier. Also, "activation codes" kill First Sale Doctrine, hampering the used game market and further eroding consumer rights.

2. Sampling music is valid, but my rationalization for pirating music is more out of 'corporate disobedience' and less in the interest of actually sampling music. I have a paid Pandora account. It's how I find out about indie bands that I want to buy the music of. I just actively WANT the labels to fail.

3. Indeed, however, I have a hard time wanting to support an industry that forces HDCP on it's customers. This is one of the reasons I won't buy a blu-ray player. Seriously, read about it.

4. Until they find a way to kill First Sale Doctrine, I agree with you here.

Piracy is piracy no matter how you try and pretty it up.

Who's prettying things up? The things I'm talking about are quite horrible, really. I WANT for there to be no reason to pirate things, but if that's what it takes to acquire a product that's not defective by design, why not?

1.I'd argue that there are often demos (for pc) , available via steam and other clients.

and services like onlive you can actually watch somebody play the game via arena (for free), or spend a few bucks to try the game for a few hours in the full vertion.

2. i mostly just listen to pandora on my free account. i listen to the ads and they get thier money that way. but it still isn't pirating

3. movies and blueray... meh netflix is pretty cheap if you want that option. presonally i just mostly watch what is on tv if it wasn't for my roomate having net flix and watchign it on my ps3 I'd probably not have it.

4. books unless they are hardback are cheap, digital copies even more so. I'll buy books after reading a chapter or two if it is good

I agree with wolfe, also think that the "im entitled to luxury goods, and i can take what i want" thing is wrong. There are very few things in this world that people are entitled to on this earth, primarily being life, liberty and the PURSUIT of happiness. You have to EARN things, taking things illegally hurts other peoples pursuit of their goals and is unfair.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In economics we learned about stealing...its not good for the economy. Nothing is gained overall, you gain X dollars worth, the other person loses X dollars worth of whatever is stolen, leading to 0 net gain. Whereas in a sale, the company gains the x dollars of profit and you gain the x dollars worth of the enjoyment above the cost that the product brought to you.

daedalus wrote:

Commisar Wolfie wrote:The problem with the whole arguement of justifing pirating for demo purposes makes no sense.

1. Most games have free demos available with a little looking, also you could always rent games from gamefly or such to try them out.
2. You can sample music by using any of the free internet radio sites
3. You can watch previews and bits of movies on many sites ike youtube and such.
4. Books you can just go to any bookstore and read a chapter or two, or go to a library where they don't charge you for checking out any book. Many books will also have sample chapters available on-line.
So really any need for sample or demo purposes can be found legally online with just a little searching.

1. Not enough of them, sadly. The way of shareware has kind of gone out the window, and you can't rent computer games. There's still a few game developers who do this, but I doubt you're going to find demos for Bethesda, EA, or Blizzard games. Also, this doesn't cover the "I paid money for a product inferior to the free version of it" scenario I presented earlier. Also, "activation codes" kill First Sale Doctrine, hampering the used game market and further eroding consumer rights.

2. Sampling music is valid, but my rationalization for pirating music is more out of 'corporate disobedience' and less in the interest of actually sampling music. I have a paid Pandora account. It's how I find out about indie bands that I want to buy the music of. I just actively WANT the labels to fail.

3. Indeed, however, I have a hard time wanting to support an industry that forces HDCP on it's customers. This is one of the reasons I won't buy a blu-ray player. Seriously, read about it.

4. Until they find a way to kill First Sale Doctrine, I agree with you here.

Piracy is piracy no matter how you try and pretty it up.

Who's prettying things up? The things I'm talking about are quite horrible, really. I WANT for there to be no reason to pirate things, but if that's what it takes to acquire a product that's not defective by design, why not?

I agree with some points here, but would like to add my 2 cents...

On game Demos-
1) They are hardly a representation of the game, usually filled with fluff
2) Many components are missing, like multiplayer, full level design, full test of AI, etc
3) Demos are often times beta versions, some things don't make it into the game
4) Demos are not always available
5) You cannot return PC software usually for a refund, at best store credit

Music:
1) I have tons of records, CDs, and purchased digital songs. it is not like I don't buy them
2) I always buy from Independent record labels direct
3) If signed to a major label and I don't like the band all that much I'll download the few songs I do like, perhaps see them live
4) Musicians make more money off of touring than they do record sales, and that money goes to them. I will pay to see them live, buy a shirt, perhaps a CD/Record at the show
5) Over the years I have had several out of print CDs stolen from my car, work desk, home, etc. I cannot buy them, the only way to get them is to pirate them online. Many rare records are only available via downloading them illegally

Software:
1) Pirate Microsoft and Adobe all you want, I really dislike both companies. They lack competition, their developers are lazy, they don't follow any standards (well MS does, but Adobe sure as hell doesn't), and they will never change until they have to if decent competition shows up
2) Pay for your OS. I have one Windows machine at home, and I paid for the OS. My work gives me tons of Macs for free since I am a Unix/OS X admin by trade, and all my other PCs run Linux, because I refuse to pay for an OS to stream media to my HDTV. However, I also refuse to pirate an OS. I think everyone should buy their OS
3) If you pirate software to learn it, that is OK in my book. Since I am a System Administrator I often at times have had to support Autodesk, Final Cut, Adobe, and so forth. I am not a professional designer, I am not a video editor and I definitely don't do any CAD work. However, I do need to understand the basics of these apps to deploy them and support them to my users. If we are looking at testing something out and the developers don't offer us a free trial version (full blown trial, not limited version trial) I will pirate it because I am not going to pay $1000s of dollars to play with software I just need to learn the basics on and never use.
4) If your software is so heavy in DRM that you legally purchased it makes it a pain in the ass to use, download the cracked version and shelf your legit version. No one will ever sue you if you legally paid form something and you have the pirated version. I can think of several times in the past when we purchased a software product that required really stupid license activations (or you had to build your own in-house license server) and even though you paid a crap ton for the software you really couldn't use it, unless you spent more money building a license server. So, you download the crack that disables the license.

Now, I want to state that I do feel pirating in general is morally wrong, but I also do feel that there is a lot of gray area. In the age of technology the whole free market place doesn't mean we are getting the best products because of the free market. In fact it is quite opposite. With super large software companies like Autodesk, Microsoft, Symantec, and tech companies like Google, Apple, IBM, etc, they often buy up the competition before it can affect the market. So your free market doesn't mean anything. Some years ago we were looking at a wireless solution at work and my boss called in sales reps and contractors from every major networking hardware company. I cannot recall this companies name but they had the best performance by far, and when we tried to purchase their product 5 months later, Cisco had bought them out and shelved their product. So we weren't even given a choice. Also the most successful technology companies do not create the best products, they just did business smarter and were able to buy out the competition before it became competition.

So, when companies make a bad product and there is no alternative the consumer/enterprise really doesn't have a choice. Maybe it is the teenage punk rock against all authority personality in me from back in the day when I was a kid, but I feel that pirating some products sticks it to the man. However, I fully support the products I use and their companies. However, with GW stuff I usually buy used and I get killer deals on ebay. Never been burned yet and I always save 20 to sometimes 50% off of retail cost. I am not supporting GW first hand because they aren't getting my money but at the same time I am not pirating their products.

so, here is the tl;dr list
1) Pirating is OK if it is movies and music you don't like that much and would not really buy anyway, plus it opens you up to many new artists
2) Pirating software is bad, but not the worst thing in the world - buy your products, write developers when they suck, if you are too poor and need to learn it for a job, pirate it
3) Always support what you love, buy their products and support their industry. So, if your favorite band has a new album buy it

2. Sampling music is valid, but my rationalization for pirating music is more out of 'corporate disobedience' and less in the interest of actually sampling music. I have a paid Pandora account. It's how I find out about indie bands that I want to buy the music of. I just actively WANT the labels to fail.

Amen, gaks gotten so bloated in the music industry any job blow that gets selected by one doesn't have to be THAT good to make more money than god when the rest of us bust our hump and have to pray to make the bills by due date. Of course after that all the usual tenants of capitalism apply, although in the music industry, often without the benefits.

3) If you pirate software to learn it, that is OK in my book. Since I am a System Administrator I often at times have had to support Autodesk, Final Cut, Adobe, and so forth. I am not a professional designer, I am not a video editor and I definitely don't do any CAD work. However, I do need to understand the basics of these apps to deploy them and support them to my users. If we are looking at testing something out and the developers don't offer us a free trial version (full blown trial, not limited version trial) I will pirate it because I am not going to pay $1000s of dollars to play with software I just need to learn the basics on and never use.

if I could find a pirated copy of autocad I'd use it. $3k is criminal and it's a program i need and don't have access to otherwise. so feth them for trying to extort it out of me i'll get it for free if i can.

autocad through a learning institute is $90 bucks, i bought it in 2010 from a friend in school, he used his school id and BAM cheap autocad, if you have any firends in college get it that way. full disks and all, adobe does the same thing, you can get full photoshop/ premiere for cheap through universities and community colleges

G00fySmiley wrote:autocad through a learning institute is $90 bucks, i bought it in 2010 from a friend in school, he used his school id and BAM cheap autocad, if you have any firends in college get it that way. full disks and all, adobe does the same thing, you can get full photoshop/ premiere for cheap through universities and community colleges

This actually highly depends on the school's license agreement with said software company. They pay for that ability to sell it that cheap and not all schools offer it. I work in IT in academia actually and I know first hand how it works. We don't pay Microsoft for a very hefty site license and MSDN account therefore the school system I work for does not allow employees to buy (or students for that matter) cheap copies of Windows. Where as some school systems allow students buy any MS product for $15.

When server 2008 came out I downloaded it, cracked it, loaded it into a VM, and played with the updated active directory stuff, then once I saw the changes I promptly deleted it. I am not going to pay $1,000 for the cheapest license to learn a product I may or may not have to support at my work. My work isn't about to drop $1,000 to just test it either.

as for photoshop and autoCAD there are actually alternatives to these applications but of course Autodesk and Adobe are pretty much industry standards.

G00fySmiley wrote:autocad through a learning institute is $90 bucks, i bought it in 2010 from a friend in school, he used his school id and BAM cheap autocad, if you have any firends in college get it that way. full disks and all, adobe does the same thing, you can get full photoshop/ premiere for cheap through universities and community colleges

The licenses are different. Developing for commercial gain on those licenses is criminal more often than not. Also, owning a license from an educational institution when you are not part of the same institution is not entirely legal, either.

dajobe wrote:Automatically Appended Next Post:
In economics we learned about stealing...its not good for the economy. Nothing is gained overall, you gain X dollars worth, the other person loses X dollars worth of whatever is stolen, leading to 0 net gain. Whereas in a sale, the company gains the x dollars of profit and you gain the x dollars worth of the enjoyment above the cost that the product brought to you.

That's actually not entirely true when it comes to intellectual property. "Stealing" intellectual property (note that you can't legally steal intellectual property) the thief gains the equivalent of X dollars of entertainment while the company loses nothing at all. In fact, secondhand sales over e-bay and what have you is exactly analogous to someone infringing for personal use, at least as far as the company who owns the rights to the intellectual property is concerned.

Distributing intellectual property or items manufactured from intellectual property that is not your own is an entirely different matter.

Mahtamori wrote:

G00fySmiley wrote:autocad through a learning institute is $90 bucks, i bought it in 2010 from a friend in school, he used his school id and BAM cheap autocad, if you have any firends in college get it that way. full disks and all, adobe does the same thing, you can get full photoshop/ premiere for cheap through universities and community colleges

The licenses are different. Developing for commercial gain on those licenses is criminal more often than not. Also, owning a license from an educational institution when you are not part of the same institution is not entirely legal, either.

he installed it on his hard drive... i bought his hard drive which he didn't wipe i also did this with windows technically i bought the parts made a computer for him and he sold it back to me with windows for a buck. it gets transfered to the new owner but you're right i can't use it commercially legally

coolyo294 wrote:Pointless thread is pointless.

agreed

Mahtamori wrote:

G00fySmiley wrote:autocad through a learning institute is $90 bucks, i bought it in 2010 from a friend in school, he used his school id and BAM cheap autocad, if you have any firends in college get it that way. full disks and all, adobe does the same thing, you can get full photoshop/ premiere for cheap through universities and community colleges

The licenses are different. Developing for commercial gain on those licenses is criminal more often than not. Also, owning a license from an educational institution when you are not part of the same institution is not entirely legal, either.

dajobe wrote:Automatically Appended Next Post:
In economics we learned about stealing...its not good for the economy. Nothing is gained overall, you gain X dollars worth, the other person loses X dollars worth of whatever is stolen, leading to 0 net gain. Whereas in a sale, the company gains the x dollars of profit and you gain the x dollars worth of the enjoyment above the cost that the product brought to you.

That's actually not entirely true when it comes to intellectual property. "Stealing" intellectual property (note that you can't legally steal intellectual property) the thief gains the equivalent of X dollars of entertainment while the company loses nothing at all. In fact, secondhand sales over e-bay and what have you is exactly analogous to someone infringing for personal use, at least as far as the company who owns the rights to the intellectual property is concerned.

Distributing intellectual property or items manufactured from intellectual property that is not your own is an entirely different matter.

k, i was just talking about regular property, i dont know the economics of intellectual property theft, so ill believe you

Technically when you buy a piece of software or a digital media file you actually aren't purchasing a file or a game. You are leasing a license, yes that is right, lease. You technically do not own it, and you must agree to the EULA to use it. Now EULAs have not really ever held up in court, and you can buy and sell video games second hand, which the developers and publishers don't see a single cent for. that is why EA is trying to put DRM on their games so if you buy it used you must activate it online for a minimal fee to unlock the game's full content.

When you buy things used you aren't benefiting any record label, consumer product company, technology company and when you guy GW stuff used they don't see any money at all for it. I buy over 50% of my GW stuff used these days because I can get it for up to half price. So, I guess technically I am not supporting their company since I rarely buy new boxed sets. When I do buy new boxed sets I do it on ebay a lot. Hell, I bought a 3,000 point Ogre army online used for about $300, which would have cost me about $600-700 retail from GW.

Crom - technically that is not true, not in the UK at least. UK UCTA makes EULAs unenforceable, as they are not actual contracts and are by their nature unfair (there is no meeting of minds and no consideration)

This holds true for boxed items anyway - not digital downloads.

It is true but it doesn't hold up in court really at all. Admittedly I am not all that familiar with the EU regulations in Europe though. I just know there have been cases in the US where the EULA didn't hold any water in court. Like if someone rips their retail music CD they purchased to their iPod they are technically breaching EULA since you are not allowed to transfer medias with out consent or repurchase, but no judge would ever sentence a fine on anyone who actually purchased the CD. Same thing goes with recording TV with your VHS.

as for photoshop and autoCAD there are actually alternatives to these applications but of course Autodesk and Adobe are pretty much industry standards.as for photoshop and autoCAD there are actually alternatives to these applications but of course Autodesk and Adobe are pretty much industry standards.

They are industry standards for a reason. The one I currently use isn't quite as good, but it works, and it's freeware. So I still can't see paying the 3k for it when theres something ALMOST as good for FREE

gendoikari87 wrote:

as for photoshop and autoCAD there are actually alternatives to these applications but of course Autodesk and Adobe are pretty much industry standards.as for photoshop and autoCAD there are actually alternatives to these applications but of course Autodesk and Adobe are pretty much industry standards.

They are industry standards for a reason. The one I currently use isn't quite as good, but it works, and it's freeware. So I still can't see paying the 3k for it when theres something ALMOST as good for FREE

Yes but in my world (IT - sys admin) we loathe autodesk and adobe products. We loathe them because they are a super huge pain in the ass to support, maintain, deploy, etc. I am sure they are awesome to the actual end user. I really wish there was a better competing product out there that didn't make using their product in a professional nightmare a total pain in the ass. Then again if it was really simple maybe there wouldn't be a need for IT people then....oh well.

well for basic autocad it's not that hard, it's MS paint with a command line. which is all I really need.

Crom wrote:It is true but it doesn't hold up in court really at all. Admittedly I am not all that familiar with the EU regulations in Europe though. I just know there have been cases in the US where the EULA didn't hold any water in court. Like if someone rips their retail music CD they purchased to their iPod they are technically breaching EULA since you are not allowed to transfer medias with out consent or repurchase, but no judge would ever sentence a fine on anyone who actually purchased the CD. Same thing goes with recording TV with your VHS.

No, in the UK it isnt true; a retail purchase with a shrink-wrap EULA makes the shrink wrap EULA unenforceable; it fulfils the Unfair Contract Terms Acts definition of an unfair contract in its entirety

The two cases above are fair use protected in the US. Something the UK has no concept of...yet. Sony vs Betamax is the tv on VHS court case, showing time shifting was legal. Which is why its a joke tyhat Sony is the only corporation to ever sue itself (Betamax was sony)

nosferatu1001 wrote: Sony vs Betamax is the tv on VHS court case, showing time shifting was legal. Which is why its a joke tyhat Sony is the only corporation to ever sue itself (Betamax was sony)

I think you've got that story confused. The court case was Sony against Universal... and it was Universal suing Sony for encouraging copyright infringement by selling videotapes.

Sony has sued a company that they owned a stake in, but that was over music downloads, not videotapes.

smeugal fan wrote:

coolyo294 wrote:Pointless thread is pointless.

agreed

Not pointless.....Just really offtopic