Is piracy a necessary evil?

I got into this conversation with a few friends not too long ago. Is piracy a necessary evil? I said yes, and I'll elaborate.

As a kid, I always played games. I had a lot of pirated games. And games back then were pretty expensive. I don't think my parent's would have bought games for me at all, just because it was expensive. And if that happened, I would have played football or something to pass the time. But I don't play football. I play games. And I think those pirated games made me a gamer. If I didn't have games, I wouldn't have developed an interest in games. And if my parent's bought me 1 game, and only 1 game, I still wouldn't have become a gamer.

I don't pirate games any more. I buy them. Because I respect and admire the effort game developer's put in, so that I can walk around in a fantasy realm. Most of my friends that game, also buy games. And it turns out, they also pirated games a lot when they were kids.


BUT, and there's a big but (heheheh), DRM is a lot stricter compared to 10-20 years ago. Piracy isn't the same. Back then, we would burn CD's and share the CD-Key. And if you didn't know the CD-key, filling in the boxes with 0's always worked. So, would kid's of the current generation have that kind of liberty? I don't know many kids that know how to mount an ISO. It'll be harder for them to develop their interest in gaming, unless their parent's indulge their hobby. Which isn't that pricey, nowadays. But there are always kids who live with strict parents or live in disadvantaged homes. So is it fair for them? Speaking from a business perspective, kids are future consumers. Well, kids that understand the honour system. I'm pretty sure there are adults who pirate games exclusively.

A point to make against piracy is that games have a lot more replayability. From my stats in Minecraft, it says I've been playing for 36 days. That's 800+ hours. I never played that many hours of Dig Dug or Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion.


Anyways, what is your take on this? I would've said that piracy is a necessary evil for kids, but the whole DRM thing is swaying my vote.

Back when I was younger, piracy was all the rage, especially in the console wars. The Playstation won in the local area as everyone had 'that uncle' who used to 'chip' their Playstations for £10 then sell games for £5 each. On the other-hand, I had an N64 and well, there were no pirated N64's due to fact no one had the equipment or resources. This trend continued on with the PS2 especially, meaning Playstation only got their market dominance because of the black market.

The thing is, many games are overpriced. You always have budget games at Triple-A prices (and most of tthe AAA are not worth it either) and you still have this now. As a responsible adult, I simply don't buy the games, or if the game is good but not worth the price, I would wait for a sale so it comes within a price range I feel is acceptable to purchase.

As for children, most of the 'Arcade'/Casual type games have been refocused to them. Which are usually priced around $5-10 but end of the day, the adults are expected to pay for these things. Like how you see six year olds with the latest iPhone.


As for any 'Good', there are the arguments that cracking games helps show developers they cannot simply fill their software with DRM nonsense which gimps over the legitimate user. However, there is the argument that without piracy, there would be no DRM... swings and round-abouts.

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But there are always kids who live with strict parents or live in disadvantaged homes. So is it fair for them?

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I know this is gonna make me sound authoritarian but... entertainment isn't a right, neither are games. If you've read between the lines of my posts you know my stance on Piracy, but you can't justify it by saying "but people can't afford games."

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Communist Monk has spoken:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgKazTrhXmI

It's a reality and it really sucks, but you will not die if you cannot play the new Halo, or watch the new Bond movie. Odds are if you cannot afford the mediums you enjoy that entertain you, you have much bigger issues you should be worrying about.

Or you're a kid. In which case either learn how to beg or get a rich girlfriend. Or boyfriend. I mean, whatever you want little dude/dudette.

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

Piracy is like shoplifting. Only kids and criminally stupid adults think its okay.

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Whilst that is correct, there is a huge demand for change within the system.

I know many people who would follow this example: Person A doesn't have access to X. So person A gains access to X by alternative methods. Once X comes available to purchase, person A buys it.

Person A is not fundamentally bad, they have clear intention to pay, in cases like these, it highlights the flaws within the system where Person A feels like he has to resort to such measures. There is even this example with Civilisation 5. "Person A buys X. X doesn't work. Person A gains access to X by alternative methods." The DRM restricted a lot of people at launch from playing the game they bought and the pirated version was far more stable.

So is Piracy a necessary evil? No it isn't.
Does examining piracy give the potential to demonstrate flaws within the system? It does.

Combat the root causes and piracy will go down. There will always be those who want something for nothing, but most are people who are willing to pay, thus should provide for ways to entice them to pay.

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Originally Posted by Monk

I know this is gonna make me sound authoritarian but... entertainment isn't a right, neither are games. If you've read between the lines of my posts you know my stance on Piracy, but you can't justify it by saying "but people can't afford games."

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Communist Monk has spoken:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgKazTrhXmI

It's a reality and it really sucks, but you will not die if you cannot play the new Halo, or watch the new Bond movie, or read the next J.R.R Martin book. Odds are if you cannot afford the mediums you enjoy that entertain you, you have much bigger issues you should be worrying about.

Or you're a kid. In which case either learn how to beg or get a rich girlfriend. Or boyfriend. I mean, whatever you want little dude/dudette.

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True, entertainment is not a right. But try to explain that to a kid. My point was that it wasn't difficult to obtain pirated games back in the day. The kids of that era are now adults, and most of them pay for games. How will we know what the next generation will do? I've seen today's kids. They seem a lot more ungrateful than when I was a kid.

Bigger issues to worry about? Kids don't pay rent. They don't pay the bills. They don't buy groceries. They don't worry about their family's monetary problems. Explaining to the average kid that money is an issue isn't that effective. Unless kids have become aware of the economy and their social status, I highly doubt they will truly understand the extent of their situation. Kids aren't that smart. I should know. I was a kid. Too bad I still have the mind of one.

I am slightly under the influence, so my train of thought is knackered.

I started pirating games when I was 14-15, I did it mostly to get 15/16/18 games that I could not get legally, regardless of monetary concerns. Fallout 3 I think was the first big game I downloaded, I loved it but I couldn't get it for hell or high water.

When I became a recluse, pirating was a crutch that I think was responsable for me getting through the last two years of secondary school. Probably kept me from the highest level grades, but I was a kid, I didnt care and I was generally dissatisfied with schooling anyway. Were it not for the support for the home tutors I was given by the state I probably would have ended up with a maximum of D's. Anyway, pirating gave me games for no money, as I had little, and without having to go out in public, which was terrifying and otherwise unavoidable. When I found a game I really liked I saved up and got it "to support good developers" or however I justified it. Good games were infrequent so I didnt have to do that often, which suited me fine being an aformentioned recluse.

As I got older, out of school and into college, losing the revclusive-ness, being able to get higher rated games I started running out of proper excuses so falling back on the money issue more and more I kept pirating, because hey I'm a student, it's expected that I act like a cheap bastard. I kept on buying the good stuff: total war, mass effect, gal civ 2, SOASE but with getting older I found myself getting more aware of the outside world and ultimately more disillusioned. Constantly I learned about corporate evils, people being laid off for screw ups higher up the corporate ladder, SOPA and Protect IP, politicians screwing up every country. My sympathies for the rich and powerful was drying up is what I'm saying, and guess who it was that kept complaining about piracy. So with my concience assauged with practicallity and some small bit of spite I pirated on through college.

Then came March 6th 2012, piracy let me get mass effect 3 earlier than the EU release date, so I downloaded it and marathoned it, completeing it in two days. It broke something inside of me. Any patience and sympathy I had for game publishers went out the window and that the offending part apparantly originated from one of the office people instead of "the evil corporate overlords" basically put to rest any concerns I had about inadvertently harming the little guys, they can be undeserving just as easily.

My money woes have basically gone now but I still pirate games, I sympathise with indies enough to buy out of curtesy but I check the mainstream games out first. If they're worth my money I buy them, if they're not I dont care about them and I have afew suggestions where they can stick thier notions of potential profit loss. EA's not getting my money at all.

In my opinion, kids are justified because theyre kids, adults arent justifed but I dont care if they do. I dont pirate out of necessity, I do it out of spite and apathy.

Nothing wrong with piracy when it's about old games when their devs are long since out of business. I don't intend to pay money to some company like EA who just went and bought some legal rights to an old title, when the crew that actually created it will get nothing (since it's long been disbanded). Same about GOG, I don't need help with making a good old game run on my modern PC, the fans produce patches and mods for that, and actually regular old releases with fan patches work BETTER than most GOG games from what I read.

I'll get one point out of the way before I go on to the rest of my post. Piracy is inevitable. Doesn't matter what anyone does to try and stop it, it will always exist.

I have pirated unbelievable amounts of games, music, and videos in my lifetime. I stopped pirating games several years ago (with an exception I'll note below), but I still pirate music, television shows, and movies. The reason I stopped pirating games, and still pirate the rest is convenience. Sure, lack of money was certainly an issue when I was much younger, but it hasn't been something that got even a momentary thought for me for a decade. I pirated because I did not want to wait for the product. I hate having to go to a store to get someone, let alone not being able to use it when it is most convenient to me. Once digital downloads became widespread, I had no reason to pirate games anymore. Steam and GoG download at speeds that basically get me the game faster than if I were to drive out to the store, buy the game, and drive back. Auto-patching and other such things from streaming services only make the decision even easier.

For movies and television, I have reduced my piracy, but not yet eliminated it. If something is available on Netflix or Amazon Instant Watch, I pay for it. I regularly pay $3-5 to rent films off of Amazon and I'm entirely satisfied with that situation. I pirate media when I can't get them on those services, or when they're only for sale on Amazon and not for rent. I think that's an old and busted business model and I say sucks to you and your 20th century mindset, MPAA! I also pirate TV shows when they're aired first in other countries before coming over here. I don't want to wait. Don't make me wait and I'll pay for it the normal way. My entire media center is configured to make this process super easy for me. I torrent media and then dump them into a specific folder on my home server which is configured to be accessible by my TiVo, which can stream any media ever created. Poof, 1080p perfection on a big-ass television with no effort on my part. Convenience!

Convenience is such a big deal for me that I've even pirated some games that I own and have the discs for because I can't be bothered to dig through the CD cases and find them, then do all the disc swapping. Far easier to use a pirated version of Baldur's Gate I than to dig out my old 5 disc version. Music is kind of an outlier for me. There are super-convenient places to get music, but I guess I pirate out of habit now. That said, I download almost no music anymore. I listen to Sirius, Pandora, and podcasts for 95% of my audio listening time. I'd like to blame my loathing of the RIAA for pirating the other 5%, but the reality is I have no reason, it's just habit.

For the rest though, offer me a superior product that is easier than piracy and I will use it. If getting my entertainment the legitimate way is harder than piracy, you will not be getting my money.

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

The only way to fix those is for adult gamers to organize into actual consumer protection groups and boycotts.

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I am 100% down with this. I've got my own blacklist of people I will not buy from (cough, cough, EA, cough), but I would love for us to band together into a group with real muscle.

Do you know what I think is much worse than piracy? Coming into a forum which is seen as a fan site for a game series, and making a post that implies you are going to pirate the next release of the series, without actually stating it outright. Then bitching and whinging when the post is removed and you are infracted. That is basically cowardice, making a post that will make it look like the forum endorsed piracy, but still giving yourself an out to pretend you didn't intend to do that.

Hmm, a group similar to this one, perhaps? I'm not much of a joiner, but I would happily sign, call, email, and maybe even do a little light marching in the name of open digital rights.

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Originally Posted by johnhughthom

Do you know what I think is much worse than piracy? Coming into a forum which is seen as a fan site for a game series, and making a post that implies you are going to pirate the next release of the series, without actually stating it outright. Then bitching and whinging when the post is removed and you are infracted. That is basically cowardice, making a post that will make it look like the forum endorsed piracy, but still giving yourself an out to pretend you didn't intend to do that.

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Seems like I missed some internet drama, assuming you arent making predictions about me.

As little weight as this assurance may have I'm not planning on pirating any new total war games, Sega and CA have been consistently good to me and assuming they dont pull a bioware I'm going to stick by my brand loyalty.

Typical Greyblades, assuming everything is about you... :rolleyes:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

:clown:

This is my world, you're just living in it.

:P

Still, I'm kinda curious what you were talking about.

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Originally Posted by Greyblades

Still, I'm kinda curious what you were talking about.

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To be honest, I'm making some huge assumptions, but if I'm right you may well hear about it soon enough.

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

Piracy is like shoplifting. Only kids and criminally stupid adults think its okay.

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100% true. Even though some games may be very expensive, there is no need to pirate it because one doesn't want to fork over the money for it.

Pet peeve for me is when people confuse delivery platforms with piracy.

For example, I work for a media company, and sometimes we need to distribute HUGE files. Bittorrent is a lovely tool for this, especially if the distribution needs to be across a large organization/more than one organization.

Likewise, when I want to download a large mod such as DarthMod Empire, or a multi-gigabyte Linux distro, torrenting is reliable, convenient, and doesn't cough up blood if I need to pause it.

So ... yeah. Please don't confuse a platform with an activity. FTP does not equal piracy. Torrenting does not equal piracy.

And to go vaguely back on-topic:

Piracy will always be with us. But as Netflix has demonstrated in market after market, a cheap and convenient alternative will put a massive dent in the problem.

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Originally Posted by johnhughthom

Do you know what I think is much worse than piracy? Coming into a forum which is seen as a fan site for a game series, and making a post that implies you are going to pirate the next release of the series, without actually stating it outright. Then bitching and whinging when the post is removed and you are infracted. That is basically cowardice, making a post that will make it look like the forum endorsed piracy, but still giving yourself an out to pretend you didn't intend to do that.

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Now who could you be whining about?

Here is the thing about piracy, it can be a bad thing or something with no negative consequences, depending on how you do it.
Take my policy with music for instance. I don't have a heck of a lot of money, and can only afford to buy a very few music CDs a year. Also, because I don't have a lot of money I am not willing to risk it on something I know I won't like. What I do is find the music on Youtube if possible, and if not pirate it so that I can give it a listen. If I do not like the music, I simply delete it and don't listen to it again. When I do come upon a song or artist I like, I buy the CD for at as soon as I can afford to. No one is hurt because of my music pirating, as I would simply not be buying any of their music if I could not try it for free anyway, so they are no losing any money. Whether I don't buy it and don't listen to it, or don't buy it and listen to a pirated copy is no difference in revenue to them. When I do like their music though, I go out and buy it, which I would not be doing if I had not been introduced to it on the radio, on Youtube, or from a pirated copy first. Often times I go on to buy all a singers albums, recommend it to family and friends, etc., all of which makes them more money. If I did not pirate music, I would just go on listen to the music I already have (which I like, and would be happy with) and the record labels would only make a little money here and there from when I discover good songs on the radio. Because I do pirate music though, not only do they not lose anything, but they make a lot more money than if I didn't. Most albums I have bought I have been introduced to from pirated mp3s.

Now if I just listened to all the music I like from pirated files and never bought any of it, I could see how that could be a bad thing. Considering though that me pirating music only introduces me to more artists and makes me spend a lot more money on CDs, I fail to see how that pirating is a bad thing. When I find a good singer, I try to reward them and the label that published them in my own small way, by buying their CD.

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Originally Posted by Lemur

Piracy will always be with us. But as Netflix has demonstrated in market after market, a cheap and convenient alternative will put a massive dent in the problem.

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Media is actually the area in which I think piracy is the biggest problem at the moment. Digital distribution has already become the norm for the games industry, and that will only become more true over the next few years. Television is still very much behind the curve though. I cannot count the number of television shows that I have pirated en masse to catch up on, and then moved over to watching them on live broadcasts. By doing this, I went from being a non-watcher of the program to a watcher, but I only got there because of piracy. While some shows can be watched quickly and in bulk on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, many shows aren't on those services and even when they are it's very common for the most recent season to be missing, particularly if it's currently airing. This system really should be a no-brainer. Give me a way to stream all past episodes of your show, including the episode that aired 4 days ago, so that I can get up to speed. If your service is convenient enough, I'd even tolerate the commercials. Win-win for everyone... so why aren't very many places doing this?

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Originally Posted by TinCow

so why aren't very many places doing this?

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Because its logical and makes sense.

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This system really should be a no-brainer. Give me a way to stream all past episodes of your show, including the episode that aired 4 days ago, so that I can get up to speed. If your service is convenient enough, I'd even tolerate the commercials. Win-win for everyone... so why aren't very many places doing this?

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Because we live in a generation of transitioning technologies. Change doesn't come easy especially to old businesses like television conglomerates that have been around for over a half century. They've spent decades building and entrenching themselves into their ways, it's not going to change over night.

Give it another ten or twenty years maybe, but by then the machines will have rebelled and none of that will matter anymore so I guess we lose either way ~:(

How Netflix Reduces Piracy

There has long been three opinions about how to beat piracy; through legislation and enforcement, through better legal services, or both. Although piracy continues to exist as numerous new music services have launched, there’s no doubt consumers have far better options (free-of-charge streaming, DRM-free downloads) than they had just a few years ago.

Netflix’s chief content officer says “BitTorrent traffic drops as the Netflix traffic grows” when the service launches in a territory. “The best way to combat piracy isn’t legislatively or criminally but by giving good options,” Ted Sarandos told Stuff magazine. “One of the side effects of growth of content is an expectation to have access to it. You can’t use the Internet as a marketing vehicle and then not as a delivery vehicle.”

Piracy doesn't drop just through access to legal entertainment options. Netflix has two things going for it: a very wide reach and a best-of-class service. The company had 36.3 million streaming subscribers at the end of March, an increase of nearly 10 million subscribers in 12 months, and operates in 40 countries. And it is arguably the best streaming service and at $8 per month is the best value on the market. Popularity, quality and value go a long way in beating piracy. [...]

A 2011 study in Sweden found that, for a quarter of respondents who download music illegally, filesharing activity dropped 25% in the previous three years and 9% in the prior 12 months. In explaining their shift to legal services, respondents cited the range of music released, the increase in available music, the services' cost and their simple user experiences.

Content, value and ease of use. Netflix has these. Music services need them, too.

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Originally Posted by TinCow

Media is actually the area in which I think piracy is the biggest problem at the moment. Digital distribution has already become the norm for the games industry, and that will only become more true over the next few years. Television is still very much behind the curve though. I cannot count the number of television shows that I have pirated en masse to catch up on, and then moved over to watching them on live broadcasts. By doing this, I went from being a non-watcher of the program to a watcher, but I only got there because of piracy. While some shows can be watched quickly and in bulk on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, many shows aren't on those services and even when they are it's very common for the most recent season to be missing, particularly if it's currently airing. This system really should be a no-brainer. Give me a way to stream all past episodes of your show, including the episode that aired 4 days ago, so that I can get up to speed. If your service is convenient enough, I'd even tolerate the commercials. Win-win for everyone... so why aren't very many places doing this?

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That's a simple explanation. What's a quick and simple (from a corporate view point) thing with movies is an unholy quagmire with TV. With a movie you have a studio that financed it's creation, and a distribution company that put it on screens around the world. And are usually subsidiaries of the same corporate overlords. So putting a movie on a streaming service involves one company giving it's approval. Increasingly with TV you have multiple companies in multiple countries with their finger in a shows financial pie. And with that financial stake comes broadcast rights. Which can amount to a veto. For examples looks at any Sy-Fy original series. All of them are either co-production with the major Canadian media companies (Shaw and Bell) or were produced by those companies and SyFy bought in for US broadcast rights. Also you have the reality that any US produced TV series is going to have foreign broadcast sales. And then they wait 6 months or so (with the exception of Canada) to actually broadcast it.



Also for a current season episode you have to go to the channel website for a stream. Which is another reason it's not on Netflix right away.

Two New Reports Confirm: Best Way To Reduce Piracy Dramatically Is To Offer Good Legal Alternatives

from the pretty-obvious,-really dept

At the beginning of last year we reported on a Swedish study that showed that streaming services had halved the number of people who were downloading music illegally in Scandinavia. That's a pretty stunning figure, but of course is only one data point, which means that people can always argue that it's not possible to generalize. So it's good that not just one but two new reports confirm and broaden that finding.

The first concerns unauthorized downloads of music, films and TV in Norway. As TorrentFreak explains:

The report shows that in 2008 almost 1.2 billion songs were copied without permission. However, by 2012 that figure had plummeted to 210 million, just 17.5% of its level four years earlier.

As expected, piracy of movies and TV shows in 2008 was at much lower levels than music, with 125 million movies and 135 million TV shows copied without permission. But by last year the figures for both had reduced by around half, to 65 million and 55 million respectively.

What's interesting is that music has fallen far more than the others. One explanation for that could be the effect observed in the Swedish study referred to above, and the fact that there are far more legal offerings for music than for other media. That's borne out by other figures from the Norwegian research:

Of those questioned for the survey, 47% (representing around 1.7 million people) said they use a streaming music service such as Spotify. Even more impressively, just over half (corresponding to 920,000 people and 25% of Norwegian Internet users) said that they pay for the premium option.

The other report concerns piracy in the Netherlands. It was commissioned by Spotify, which obviously has an interest in promoting streaming solutions as a way of reducing illegal activity. Nonetheless, its figures are interesting:

Not only has the number of people engaging in music piracy in the Netherlands fallen in recent times, it also appears to be an infrequent activity for most of those who remain.

There were 6.8m residential broadband connections in the Netherlands in 2012

BitTorrent music piracy occurred on 1.8m unique IPs in 2012, around a quarter of the total

Of that 1.8m, a large passive group of 532,000 (29%) downloaded just one music file

A minority of 188,000 (10%) "hardcore" pirates downloaded 16 files or more

This Long Tail distribution is an important insight, as it highlights that most people take very little. Meanwhile, the top 10% take over half of the content.

The Spotify study quotes some figures from earlier work in the Netherlands, which show that the number of active pirates declined from around 5 million in 2008 to 3 million in 2011 and 1.8 million in 2012. Because the methodologies of the studies were different, these may not be strictly comparable, but they do give an idea of the general direction. The research also provides the following information:

Last year also saw the publication of a study titled 'File sharing 2©12: Downloading from illegal sources in the Netherlands' by Joost Poort of IviR and the University of Amsterdam. The author claimed that illegal downloading of music has fallen between 2008 and 2012, whilst film and TV piracy is increasing (see table 2). The author cited the popularity of legal alternatives such as Spotify and YouTube as being the primary reason for explaining the fall in piracy over the four year period.

Again, copyright maximalists will doubtless say these are only a few studies, but such claims are looking weaker with every new result that confirms the general trend across multiple countries. They all underline what Techdirt has been saying for years: that the best way to reduce piracy is simply to increase the number of legal options offering what people want at a fair price.

I heard about an unnamed small naughty indy game getting released. It generated quite a buzz with the PR, the PR department did such an awesome job, their own store was down for 4 days with the amount of users trying to buy copies. Then the reviews came in, what turned out to be an "awesome interactive game" turned out to be nothing more than a flash movie which cost users $25, completely different to what all the PR, Teasers and Advertising offered. A lot of people got burnt big time and once the pirates got a hold of it, it was mass spread that way and sales pummelled, the dev still obviously making a fortune from the initial surge of sales far beyond they should have.

Wasn't my cup of tea, but I have to admit, when a Dev burns its users in such a big way, having their revenue drastically lowered would prevent them profiting more from exploitive false advertising and their no return policy.

If it's a completely useless movie that's no fun, why do people want to pirate it?
Your argument sounds as though without the piracy, people would've been forced to buy it after they heard about how bad it is.

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Originally Posted by Husar

If it's a completely useless movie that's no fun, why do people want to pirate it?
Your argument sounds as though without the piracy, people would've been forced to buy it after they heard about how bad it is.

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More that they are lured into all the PR, expecting far more content. It would be like watching a teaser for Borderlands. Thinking you can pick characters, weapons and stuff, then when you buy the product, it is just movies of people playing those characters.

However, it still looks okay as a movie, however, watching Borderlands as a movie should significantly cost far less than it does as a game. So they might be interested in watching the movie but not pay an unreasonable price for it.

Eitherway, doesn't bother me. Just heard feedback about it.