Piracy

I was checking my Facebook and I encountered this picture that 9Gag app posted as an advertised post.

Well they were little arguments in the comments section if piracy is theft or not, some claimed not some claimed yes. The point is, IMO that it depends on the contents. if it was a game or software of course it theft, since it has it copyrights and by that way you are getting the developer to get less revenue or earning especially if it was his source of living. Even if the company has huge revenue from it ( Like big companies ) still you are not allowed to use it without paying the fees. on the other hand if you see a page talking about a topic and you use it in your project it is not considered piracy or theft since the publisher of the content are sharing it with other ( unless it was a book of course). BTW i liked the caption that says ("Imagine your car gets stolen, but it is still there in the morning!") terrific!

Well the main question is : is piracy theft?

to me: It depends...

OK, now suppose the gas tank is empty.

Imagine you spend 6 months making a game. Then imagine that someone copies it, including all of your artwork, and sells their version or makes money from adverts by letting people play their version of your pay-to-own game for free. Or, imagine that someone copies and plays your pay-to-own game, but they got it from a torrent site. Imagine that person tells you that they weren't stealing your work... I imagine you would disagree with them.

It's a double-edged sword, most of what Colludium says is the dark side of piracy (and very true!). However, there are many instances in digital media where piracy helps, such as creating popularity or selling franchise products like t-shirts and similar physical objects that end up making more money than the media itself (I think Game Of Thrones was one of the shows that made the most profit from pirates of the episodes versus standard customers, but I can't find where I read that at the moment)

For game devs, I'd say piracy only helps when you're a small dev who nobody knows and the people pirating it don't try to resell/claim ownership. Kind of like bootleg in the cassette tape recording days where friends share music and generate word-of-mouth about the band.

In the end, it's about how much you're willing (or able) to give away for free while still being able to do what you love. If someone doesn't make their game free/open source/etc, then there's a reason they didn't and there should be some respect given to them. I think this is why some indie devs also have an option for people to donate, who feel that the developer deserves way more than what they get from sale costs of the game.

The owners of the content define how they share the content. If they set a price on it, and you get it for free in a way outside the owner's wishes, then it is piracy

People can pretend that piracy is not theft or a crime by using metaphors and twisting it to be convenient to them, but i wonder if they really are so ignorant that they believe piracy is not theft. Weather piracy is a positive or a negative thing is a whole other topic.

Well according to dictionary.com theft is "the act of stealing", and steal has a number of definitions including "to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right", "to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment", and "to take, get, or win insidiously, surreptitiously, subtly, or by chance". I think the definition is appropriate for piracy: technically you are copying or using digital work without permission (more broadly speaking "appropriating ideas"), or "taking insidiously". The fact digital goods can be easily copied is simply a detail, and I think the image was prepared by trolls trying to defend their use of piracy by misleading people away from the dictionary definition.

A common argument is that piracy doesn't harm a business because it doesn't drain resources like bandwidth or deplete unit numbers, and most importantly, a customer that wasn't going to buy the product anyway doesn't count as a lost sale.

This argument is wrong - piracy creates a psychology of entitlement that locks into our modern cultures obsession with instant gratification; the more you pirate, the less likely you are to actually buy future products.

This is why we have so many "Free to Play", but "Pay to Win" games atm.

Piracy is sooo normal that businesses need to think about a different style of getting their stuffout on the market.

Well for real

to be hornest, there are few people who can afford to buy a game and then pirate it, especially when the game is <5$ so not really anything i would care about... at least not for the games we make... is you sell 500k + then you can start think about piracy... or just make your game even better and sell 1000k +

Funny that you should use the South Park reference, especially after their last episode was so down on the "freemium" model.

Well, on crappy games at least.

Then again you can't pirate something thats free

I will be not kind, and I am sorry for it:

piracy is not good nor bad per say, like some Saïd, sometimes it helps people getting their products known (or show how stupid your government can be, or give people excuses to add a while ton of undesured thing to their products)

but being potentially a neutral or even à positive thing does not mean it should exist! If your game is known because if piracy, it is more a "Lucky strike" rather than a thing you should claim, piracy did not make the game being known, the fact people loved it or hated it did!

piracy seems so "normal" sometimes it is crazy, I do not think this is stealing, but whatever this may be, we could do without, there are always thé same excuses:

"cultural things should be accesible for everyone"

-... applicable to some cases, but also used in other stupid cases really, and there is still the fact that thé creator wanted that to be paid, if you do not agree, Nothing forces you to download it

"it is not because I do it than it will harm"

I being "a whole ton of us" easily

"It is not worth the price"

so find a worthwhile product

"but I want to test before buying, and everyone can make a good looking demo"

hard to find an argument against other than if it do not please you, you used it freely

"what will they do against me?"

if you only think about punishment, you will not get my post anyway I would think

spécial case

"I will make money with it, then buy the software"

or you will fail miserably, or take too much time and so hurt the company partially

non exhausive list

tl;dr Piracy is something we cannot stop, does not mean it is good nor it should exists

I do not care. I will make a game like "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" without protection against the Buccaneers.

— this case actually lead me to think that either the company did a really bad job advertising his product, or the pirates were not the targetted audience, both cases are just a lucky shot for the company, but I would not say it is a positive thing, the first case would reveal a weakness that they will not see in their marketing model.

It's interesting to read all the opinions. I don't know how old you, how wrote here, are. I assume pretty young. But reading — 's "confession" reminded me of something.

I'm 47 years old. I grew up in a world without computers or cell phones, internet or even video cameras. At the age of 11 I heard of something mysterious called "Pong". I was hooked.

But since the very first "home computers", in contrast to consoles, there also was piracy. I remember my very first C64. A few days after I got that one ("Just to have an advantage in school, Dad. See, I can easily plot graphs of functions with it and calculate so much more complex than any pocket calculator could ever do!"), a datasette full of games fell miraculously into my hands. None of them were bought. And guess, what? We argued pretty much the same than you today, 30 years later. The excuses are so old as the pirated industry. And anyone bringing in almost philosophical aspects is just doing balony. It's a try to distract from the fact that one uses for free what he needs to pay for! It's morally unrighteous. At least back then I didn't pretend to be on some holy mission. Instead I was very aware that I was doing wrong. But it felt so good.

And that's the point. It feels so good. All the freedom of getting anything you want, when you want it, where you want it, without paying respect of another one's good. By pretending there is no "another one's good", but "everyone's good". Yeah, right. Like you always shared your Halloween candy with your family.

Sister: "Oh that's nice. I like it. Give it to me."

Brother: "No, you can't have it. It's mine."

Be honest and smile while remembering the scene. No, you just want other's goods to be shared. And the feeling of getting anything is nothing new. It's what people made to believe in higher entities. No matter the religion (yes, even buddhism), there always is some kind of overly rewarding situation or place. Christians know it as Garden Eden, ancient Vikings as Valhalla, ancient Egypts as the afterlife, the Koran tells of "Jannah", etc. All share the same concept. A place or feeling of everything positive in abundance.

Piracy is just a try to shortcut to Garden Eden.

Back in the stone-age. Gro has a flintstone axe. What a wonderful axe. Sharp and strong. Cuts through meat, can kill animals. A must-have for the up-to-date stone-ager! Sesh is an untalented follower of his tribe. Never had much luck in axe building. But he wants one!

Sesh: Tonight I will use your axe, Gru. You won't miss it while you're sleeping anyway!

Gru: No, you can't have it. I worked a week on it and is very valuable to me.

Sesh: I don't care. I'll take it when you are asleep. You won't even notice it.

Gru: I don't permit it! But you can have your own axe. For all the meat of a mammoth I will craft an axe for you.

Sesh: Mammoth? I don't have that much meat. That's not fair.

Gru: Then keep hunting until you get it. The axe is worth it.

Sesh: That takes way too long! I want it now!

Gru: Well, then you're out of luck.

That night, Sesh waits for Gru to fall asleep, then takes his axe and plays around with it. He throws it as hard as he can. But unfortunately the axe misses the stone Sesh was aiming at, and instead hits Gru's sister, who was sleeping just behind that stone. She dies. Sesh takes the axe, cleans it and puts it back in its place near Gru, who was sad the whole rest of his life, without ever knowing who had killed his sister.

Now tell me, and be honest: Who's right here, and who's wrong?

Oh, and back to the C64 datasette with lots of pirated games. I got it from a close friend at that time. And it had a great influence on both of us. My friend later published a german magazine all about Apple Macintosh, called "MAClife", soon followed by a lot of other magazines and businesses. He became a serious and cunning businessman, making sure to get all the money he could get.

And me? I never forgot how satisfying it was to get something without having to pay for it. It is so deep in my veins, that I since then always published for free whatever I created.

This reminds me of a funny blogpost from greenheartgames game dev tycoon about piracy of there game and how they fooled the pirates i actually find out and bought the game because of it, but its an edge case i think, http://bit.ly/134KuBk