Piracy, How much money is being lost, and what percent of them would have bought it?

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Originally posted by Freddy_Kruger
I think there are degrees of seriousness. Piracy is not robbing a bank, CLOSER to going to the library.*slight sarcasm*

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Tell that to people that are doing time in prison for non-violent crimes, including theft.

Another thing to keep in mind is that software companies have not gone all out actually prosecturing people that do this, unlike the RIAA. If the fact that getting caught is low, and chances of prosecution are low, they really haven't created any incentive not to pirate software.

I'm an ex-Pirate. Now that I got a job, dishing out 40 bucks isn't that big of a deal anymore.

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Originally posted by Un4given
Tell that to people that are doing time in prison for non-violent crimes, including theft.

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You must be american lol.

I heard story of two guys (on another forum I think) who got caught doing the same crime related to piracy rings. One in Holland and one in the states. One guy had his internet disconected, the other, 5 year in prison. Guess who was the american lol.

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Originally posted by Colossus
You have no right to say that Windows XP PRO OEM is worth $50 instead of $130.

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I have every right to say it, although I would say it's real value to me is closer to $80 than $50.

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Originally posted by Colossus
So since you dont agree with the pricing that doesnt NOT give you the right to pirate it.

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Quite true, no one has the right to pirate software, just the option. Now it's up to the software producers to give people incentives to buy their software. Most people want to be legal, but by meeting perceived expectations on pricing, software writters can greatly mitigate pirating.

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Originally posted by Colossus

Most software has a very good comparable product for less or even free...

Such as..

Windows -> Linux
Office -> OpenOffice.

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Yep, that is the best route for those who would pirate, although open source has the same or larger negative impact compared to piracy on competing commercial products, but it's legal.

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Originally posted by Colossus
If someone only likes one song on a given artist album, and wont buy the whole album for that one song. That does not give them the right to just download that one song. That is still a lost. Did you mail a check to the RIAA for $1.50 or whatever for each of those songs that you downloaded illegally?.

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I downloaded a ton of MP3's for free last week, but they were all legal downloads. I went to Metal-Rules.com, viewed their November CD reviews, and every album that garnered a score of 4 out of 5 or higher, I wanted to check out. About 95% of the bands listed had webpages and of those 80% of those had complete and free MP3's for downloading. That's an album worth of new music every month free and legal. Did I mail a check to the RIAA? No, because these are independant labels that fill a niche market. Does it impact the Artist for me to have these free and legal MP3's? Yes, in a positive way. These are bands that have no large corporation paying for promotion. You aren't going to hear them on the radio, or most likely even on satellite radio. It's exposer at minimal cost, and that makes me more likely to buy an album or go to a concert. It's the great tragedy of our age that the large lables don't take this approach as well. They can't afford to promote all their musicians equally, and no one is going to by an album from a band they haven't heard in advance.

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Originally posted by Colossus
Most people dont need the $700 photo editing package. When a much cheaper $50 or free package would do them just as well. Joe Bloe and many others do not have the skills required to take full advantage of photoshop.

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I'm in full agreement here. I own PhotoImpact and it does 99.9% of anything a person who pirates Photoshop would do with it. Photoshop and Painter are way over priced for this reason. I don't think I've met anyone who actually bought Photoshop, except people in medium or large sized firms. It's been my experience that for the most part, the exuberant prices of content creation software, are justified by helping the artist make money. They aren't really meant for hobbiest, but for folks that are going to use it to generate income. You can however, find student or light versions that are affordable. If you want continued support from these products it is in your best interest to support the software developers with your dollar.

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Originally posted by Moridin
Yes but this has nothing to do with whether the people pirating games got something they didn’t pay for it’s about whether the company selling the game lost any money as a result. If the person pirating the game was not going pay for it either way the company selling it in fact did not lose a dime since their bottom line is identical either way.

As noted above this is about how the gaming industry calculates the revenue lost to piracy, not whether piracy is right or wrong.

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It's more about the industry as a whole losing money to pirating than the company selling each specific game. We're all going to play games whether we buy them or pirate them. If a person pirates KOTOR (because they were never going to buy it), LucasArts loses no money to them but the rest of the industry does. The pirated games takes up 10 or 20 hours of their time that they would've spent on another game they would buy like Far-Cry, D3, etc.

I don't like paying more than $30 for a game especially if it's full of bugs (UT2k4 was an exception for me). So, I usually wait 3-6 months for the price to drop and patches to be available so I can fully enjoy my gaming experience. If I have nothing new to play and don't want to play someting older online, I'll read books or watch movies in the meantime. Somebody else might have the same $$ threshold but instead they'll pirate other games while they're waiting for the game(s) they want to drop in price.

I'm gonna be straight forward and honest. here

I'm now 28 actually just turned 28 last week.

anyway I've been pirating games and programs since I was about 14 years old back in 1991 since I got my first 286 PC (wow. half my life already :P

anyway I went as far as having a warez BBS in the mid 1990s with up to 4 nodes on 3 dedicated machines.

Truth is. for me personally. I just do it for the hell of it. some of those games I will never buy in the first place. and some games that are good I acutally go out and buy it. and I recoomend what game/software for them to buy when people ask me for opinions.

I got all the lateste games.
NFSU2, MOH, COD, Doom3, PainKiller, Men of valor, far cry, UT2004 etc...

but u know what. I only spend 10 minutes with them. and I don't haave
time to play them anyway so I won't be buying it in the first place. and I do regularily recommend games to other people.

(tho I did purchased UT2004 after playing the warez version for a few days. and convinced a few friends to buy it so we can play online)

I do support the author. but then again I make 50K+ a year.

but for some people they are forced to goto the warez scene.

I don't see how a 14 year old kid can pony up $49 all these new releases. maybe kids are rich right now who knows but when I was a flat as$ broke 14 year old i couldn't afford $40 for a game...

do that mean that a kid that can't afford/wont be buying a $49 game in the stores and he pirates the game. does it mean a $49 lost to piracy?

People who make illegal copies (pirates) do so to earn money.

People who download games or buy pirated copies, do so for many different reasons.

Some people wouldn't buy a game unless it was completely free.

Some people (who usually buy A LOT of games) would rather buy pirated copies because it just comes out cheaper.

I will admit that until recently, I was downloading games left and right ... I didn't play more than half of the ones I downloaded.

But with Far Cry, I started buying all the "good" games (UT2k4, Doom3 (on these forums), Rome - Total War (on these forums), Diablo battlechest (Diablo, Diablo2, Diablo2 exp) and I got the coupon for HL2 which you said was worthless, who's laughing now? (STALKER is on pre-order :D)

so, all the games I bought I liked each and everyone of them.

To me (personally), it is more pleasant to buy a game and enjoy it, than to get it for free (unless it's a gift) and enjoy it.

Then you have places like China. Until recently, PS2 wasn't sold in China, then Sony decided to release it there, and you know what? they said that games will cost much cheaper, but not cheaper than the pirated copies, so whoever says that "piracy raises prices" is full of **it (pun intended).

Also, if 100 people steal/download or otherwise get something for free, it doesn't mean that you have 100 lost possible buyers or even 1 ... it depends on how many people would buy it at all!!! There are people who wouldn't pay a cent for something.

I agree with you 100% and then some :D

IMO, when someone is selling something for kids, the idea is to make sure that kids want it ... nothing else matters!

My 12 year old cousin got 4 games when he turned 12. Needless to say, I went to EBGames and bought a used Rallysport Challenge 2 (which I admit I downloaded for XBOX), he liked the game (as did I :p)

And I am waiting for the next RallySport Challenge game and Colin McRae Rally to come out for PC (maybe even get a wheel), and I will choose one of those (leaning to Colin for now).

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Originally posted by rimmerchant
I'm gonna be straight forward and honest. here

I'm now 28 actually just turned 28 last week.

anyway I've been pirating games and programs since I was about 14 years old back in 1991 since I got my first 286 PC (wow. half my life already :P

anyway I went as far as having a warez BBS in the mid 1990s with up to 4 nodes on 3 dedicated machines.

Truth is. for me personally. I just do it for the hell of it. some of those games I will never buy in the first place. and some games that are good I acutally go out and buy it. and I recoomend what game/software for them to buy when people ask me for opinions.

I got all the lateste games.
NFSU2, MOH, COD, Doom3, PainKiller, Men of valor, far cry, UT2004 etc...

but u know what. I only spend 10 minutes with them. and I don't haave
time to play them anyway so I won't be buying it in the first place. and I do regularily recommend games to other people.

(tho I did purchased UT2004 after playing the warez version for a few days. and convinced a few friends to buy it so we can play online)

I do support the author. but then again I make 50K+ a year.

but for some people they are forced to goto the warez scene.

I don't see how a 14 year old kid can pony up $49 all these new releases. maybe kids are rich right now who knows but when I was a flat as$ broke 14 year old i couldn't afford $40 for a game...

do that mean that a kid that can't afford/wont be buying a $49 game in the stores and he pirates the game. does it mean a $49 lost to piracy?

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sorry to be spamming, but long time ago I downloaded a game called Oni.

Then I couldn't find the game ANYWHERE!!!

So I bought it used in the trade section for 5USD :)

ohh forgot to mention one IMPORTANT aspect that separate me from those other scumbag pirates.

I DO NOT PROFIT from my downloading and pirating. I can't recall one incident where I sold a pirated game to anyone. I did occasionally help someone pirate game only but they were in a situtation where they won't or can't afford it anyway.

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Originally posted by rimmerchant
ohh forgot to mention one IMPORTANT aspect that separate me from those other scumbag pirates.

I DO NOT PROFIT from my downloading and pirating. I can't recall one incident where I sold a pirated game to anyone. I did occasionally help someone pirate game only but they were in a situtation where they won't or can't afford it anyway.

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Hmmm... let's see here... the owner doesn't lose anything, and you wouldn't have paid the owner anyway, so it's okay to get it for free.

Let's say you are a taxi driver, providing a service, and I am just some guy off the street. For whatever reason, I don't want to pay you to take me around town. I know of ways to get access to your taxicab when you are not looking. I choose to use do that, and drive myself around town.


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ohh, I forgot to mention one IMPORTANT aspect that separate me from those other scumbag taxicab thieves.

I DO NOT PROFIT from my taxicab thieving. I can't recall one incident where I sold a taxicab ride to anyone. I did occasionally help someone else steal your taxicab, but they were in a situation where they won't or can't afford it anyway.
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If I go in front of a judge with that explanation, I'm going to jail for grand theft auto.

"You don't lose anything, and I wouldn't have paid for it if you had forced me to pay for its use" works in a commune. Everything belongs to everybody. Unfortunately, you live in a capitalist economy (or, want the software from companies that exist in a capitalist economy). In a capitalist economy, you must pay if you want to buy a product or use a service. If you don't, it's stealing.

This has parallels to the idea of digital music and music piracy... there is no question that illegally downloading MP3s is stealing. But just because its wrong, doesn't mean that everybody will stop doing it. The fact of the matter is that software, like music, is prone to digital piracy, and will always be victims of digital piracy. The publishers can either try to prosecute offenders and "force" them back to the old ways of business (ie, go to store and buy a CD or retail game package... or else we will take you to court), or they can try and offer incentives for people to pay for something that they could get for free anyway. The software publishers should take some responsibility if they want to see this problem go away... they should embrace digital data distribution and integrate it into their business models, instead of trying to fight it head on.

But that doesn't mean you are allowed to just sit back and pirate until the software companies make it easier for you to buy than to pirate. Don't copy that floppy.

pirating = profit

everything else is just copyright infrigment.

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Originally posted by rimmerchant
ohh forgot to mention one IMPORTANT aspect that separate me from those other scumbag pirates.

I DO NOT PROFIT from my downloading and pirating. I can't recall one incident where I sold a pirated game to anyone. I did occasionally help someone pirate game only but they were in a situtation where they won't or can't afford it anyway.

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I admire the heck out of these pirates, in fact, some groups have huge followings and most them (if you believe them) buy the software, crack it, then share it. Thy say they do it for the scene or for the challange and that they dont make any money off it.

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Originally posted by slavik
pirating = profit

everything else is just copyright infrigment.

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Kids, kids, kids. If you want to try and have a discussion on piracy, at least understand what it means.

Pirating has nothing to do with profit.

Dictionary.com, just a click away.

v. pi·rat·ing
To make use of or reproduce (another's work) without authorization.

Now then, where do you see "for profit" in that description? Nowhere. Copyright infringement = pirating.

-MrD

when first copyright infrigements started, who would sell the books???

pirates.