Is pirating right? I believe that it is fine, enough people buy the product so the producer won't go broke if a few million people pirate it.

To play the devil's advocate (since I do pirate stuff sometimes myself)
This view seems fairly self-centered. The company that produces the game, music, or movie has put hours of their own time into the creation of the product, and their livelihood depends on its success. Especially in today's suffering music industry, not every artist will make it big, it's certain that some have money difficulties. If you had spent time at your job or creating a product, wouldn't you feel cheated if somebody had gotten that product for free that you had spent so much time creating and marketing?
On a smaller scale, it would be theft, but because you don't see the people you're taking from it seems alright?

I buy good games. I pirate games to try them out.

Case in point: Medieval II: Total War. Loved the first game, so I pirated the second for a week, liked it, then bought the full version.

The only games I pirate and don't buy are games like Spore, which I pirated so I could play without the DRM bullshit, and games like the first Half-Life that are too old to make me feel like the company still deserves my money to play it.

Basically I will pirate any game more than 10 years old without feeling too bad.






I pirate all my music.

Coming from a musician, I'd love it if people bothered to pirate my music. Hell, I've considered putting my music on TPB and other tracker sites. I think most people who download music tend to download stuff they wouldn't otherwise look into, and I'll take promotion over money any day.

That being said if I paid for rent and food with that money and piracy was cutting into it, I'd be taking a different stance, but people like that are doing things wrong. If you're at a point in your career where piracy is hurting more than it's helping then you should have a day job to fill the gaps.

Face it, I don't have the money for a 999$ program. I do however have the time to download the torrent and keygen.

Look at flash pirating. That's a completely victimless crime because not one of the people who pirate it would ever consider buying it, thus adobe gets the same amount of money either way. The only things it's wrong to pirate are things which you would have paid for, had pirating not been an option. Hence I buy pendulum and pirate the prodigy.

Quote from Exilement

Coming from a musician, I'd love it if people bothered to pirate my music. Hell, I've considered putting my music on TPB and other tracker sites. I think most people who download music tend to download stuff they wouldn't otherwise look into, and I'll take promotion over money any day.

well you're an independent artist, of course you'd like it if people liked your music enough to steals it froms yous.

but if you're a mainstream artist and your shit plays on the radio and whatnot, and you rarely make profit from albums then that would suck.


though i went through a phase of ****ing PIRATE EVERYTHING, HOLY SHIT I DON'T HAVE TO PAY FOR SHIT!
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i'm fine with buying games, and alright with buying music, but one thing i probably can't fathom buying are movies (dvd/bluray, not movie theater shit, even though that's expensive as **** too). maybe it's because i don't feel like paying 10-20 bucks for something that will last 1-2 hours. and pirating is soooooo much more ****ing easy then going out and buying them (which steam helped game pirating with their service). sure, there's netflix, but they don't have every movie, pirating does have every movie.
and most movies don't have a rewatch value to me.

but video games, GOOD video games, that is.
i usually pirate the game first, and if I think it's great, i'll totally buy it. having multiplayer is a nice incentive though, i used to not buy singleplayer games, but if it's good enough i will.
heres a list of games i've bought.boop

for music, eh, i've pirated a lot more then i've bought, but i'm sure most are in the same boat. but i've bought a few albums, but i would never ****ing buy digital music, from itunes and shit, that's ****ing stupid in my opinion.
the only cd's i've bought in my life are.. Demon Days (before I knew I could pirate whole albums, back in my limewire/bearshare days.) Eminem Show.
then i didn't buy any music for a long time, then I felt like buying some music of these ****ing albums i've listened to literally hundreds of times.
bought dethkloks first album, then preordered their 2nd, i have two copies of their 2nd deluxe album, lool (it was half off on amazon)
then i bought every goldfrapp album but her first, i'd like to get her first someday but i don't know where to put it in my car, i have no room for more cd's lol
also a mezzanine and blue lines 2 pack by massive attack..

also for pc gaming, i'd probably never buy a game unless it's on steam.

and the only game i regret buying is borderlands, and only bought that because of lying developers.

also once i found out i could pirate ps2 games, ooooooh boy, fun times

Quote from Zed

Look at flash pirating. That's a completely victimless crime because not one of the people who pirate it would ever consider buying it, thus adobe gets the same amount of money either way.

But perhaps this would not be so if pirating was not an option?

If the only way to get flash was to buy it, then while this site would be a ghost town they would get the same amount of legitimate buys and also additional purchases by those who might have pirated before.

for pirating flash, i see it as this

if you're using it for personal fun, like making some stick animation for here or newgrounds or whatever, then i'm sure adobe doesn't give a ****, their program isn't meant to be bought by 12 year old stick figure animators.

now once you start making money from flash, like if you sell your animation to jay or whatever, you must have an official flash license.

and i wonder if adobe would like it if people pirated their program, since more people would use it, and get good at it, to the point where they can make money off of it, and then they would have to buy their product to do so..

I pirate games to test them out.

If I feel that the game is worth paying for, I'll go buy a copy.

Quote from Myself

I pirate games to test them out.

If I feel that the game is worth paying for,

i'll go buy a copy when it stops working (due to my getting a new computer/reinstall windows and i don't have the iso any more) to avoid having to download it again

OR if it's a really good game with multiplayer as the main feature (RARE)

I pirate for portability (psp umds are annyoing to carry around), I would buy games if the companies sold the isos...

why buy a copy, is it not on steam?

Quote from Wsheerio

I pirate for portability (psp umds are annyoing to carry around), I would buy games if the companies sold the isos...

LOL no you wouldn't.
if you want to buy the game, buy the game, rip it to your computer, then put them on your psp memory card.

Depends, some stuff I will pirate, games especially, as before I haven't had a high end PC which I could guarantee that they would run full stop. Music I currently buy more then I pirate because no one uploads the stuff I like. Movies I will rent and rip.