Original Post
CMon's Weekly - #3: Piracy, and why you're a dick for doing it
A very large majority of us have done it. You all know what I'm talking about. Piracy is a controversial subject, where the actual laws are diffuse, and if there are laws, they are riddled with loopholes and flaws. All we know is that one side of the fence screams "Piracy = Stealing" while the other side just doesn't seem to care much. After all, it's there for the taking, right?
Oh, how silly of me, it seems I forgot to move a little bit further away from the fence on the latter side. There are people with a questionable sense of logic in this world, no doubt about that, and the people that keeps thinking of piracy as a right definitely belong in this group.
It came to my attention that a large group of people were unhappy that The Sims 3 was an incomplete game. (If you're wondering; Sims 3 largely depends on EA's downloadable content for full functionality.) The same group were also bemoaning EA's poor "customer service", as a response to them leaking a flawed and bugged version of the game, presumably to aggrieve eager pirates waiting to get their kicks on for free.
I can't help but feel that EA are winners here in every possible way. Most homes with computers are nowadays also outfitted with internet connection so getting hold of the DLC if you've got a legitimate copy of the game is a breeze. People such as Benjamin Croshaw argumented that EA were "evil" for doing this thing (possibly an ironic statement), but if clever marketing is evil, pants equals shorts and other outrageous stuff.
Anyways, the moaning slowly passed away when they managed to get hold of full content, an entire two weeks after the game's original release, but God-fucking-Christ, right? The pirates put hours of work into searching the appropriate torrents, clicking the "download" button, and pausing it to allow for quicker streams of porn every time the old wankstick started to itch, only to find out that it wasn't a complete game! That's atrocious, I mean, it's like you're trying to get people to pay for a scam and then they fail to pay the first invoice!
I'm of a harsh opinion that anyone believing in piracy as a right, and looking upon copyright protection, fake leaks, DLC content and stuff like that as a dick-move needs to have some serious rectal massage, preferably executed by a large specimen of Ferocactus Glaucescens. Assuming you'd actually fit it in there of course, what with their head being lodged up there and all.
One commonly used pro-piracy argument is the "downloading it is not affecting their income". Well hellooooooo, did you get an F- in maths on junior high or something? Of course it's affecting their income. The more people downloading, the lesser the income gets. Luckily, you also have (stupid) people that don't know about the wonders of the intertubes, as well as those who actually have the gallancy to support the creators, so most big-name publishers and artists still get a largely satisfactory amount of income. But still, stealing from Bill Gates isn't cool, even though it might be cooler than stealing from some random homeless guy.
Pro piracy argument #2: "Games/albums/movies are too expensive/I can't afford them." Well boo-hoo and et cetera, I guess some people just happen to be more well-off than others by cruel happenstance. I suggest you live with it. And another thing; one of the main reasons behind prices spiking is infact piracy. Think about it, a company develops a game and set themselves a satisfactory goal for their income. However, piracy is very likely and they must take that into account, so they up the price of the game to match their goal. Simple economics, really.
Numero 3: "There's no laws against it." Well at this time, I'm pretty sure there are some kinds of laws against it in just about the whole world now, maybe apart from in some diffuse banana-countries, but they are probably more worried about keeping their kids fed than finding the complete Season 6 set of House. Besides, I refuse to believe that any sane person can actually say "it's never bad if it's not directly against a law". Pissing in the soup-bowl during a family-dinner party probably isn't against any written laws, but you still refrain from doing it though because then you'd be a fucking twat.
I guess my final point in all this would have to be; there are norms. I'm not gonna go on an all-out critique on those who download pirated content, after all, that'd make me a hypocrite, as well as being guilty as hell, but, pirating is NOT. YOUR. RIGHT. We are dicks for being pirates. People work for creating the end project that we're so comfortably grabbing for free. Realize this, don't argue that you're being hard done whenever companies come up with a clever new method of making it harder for distributors of warez. It surely does nothing good, other than revealing said person's true colours:
They're idiots.
And egosentric ones at that.
Sincerely,
~CMon, "yoho, yoho, a pirate's life for me"
Oh, how silly of me, it seems I forgot to move a little bit further away from the fence on the latter side. There are people with a questionable sense of logic in this world, no doubt about that, and the people that keeps thinking of piracy as a right definitely belong in this group.
It came to my attention that a large group of people were unhappy that The Sims 3 was an incomplete game. (If you're wondering; Sims 3 largely depends on EA's downloadable content for full functionality.) The same group were also bemoaning EA's poor "customer service", as a response to them leaking a flawed and bugged version of the game, presumably to aggrieve eager pirates waiting to get their kicks on for free.
I can't help but feel that EA are winners here in every possible way. Most homes with computers are nowadays also outfitted with internet connection so getting hold of the DLC if you've got a legitimate copy of the game is a breeze. People such as Benjamin Croshaw argumented that EA were "evil" for doing this thing (possibly an ironic statement), but if clever marketing is evil, pants equals shorts and other outrageous stuff.
Anyways, the moaning slowly passed away when they managed to get hold of full content, an entire two weeks after the game's original release, but God-fucking-Christ, right? The pirates put hours of work into searching the appropriate torrents, clicking the "download" button, and pausing it to allow for quicker streams of porn every time the old wankstick started to itch, only to find out that it wasn't a complete game! That's atrocious, I mean, it's like you're trying to get people to pay for a scam and then they fail to pay the first invoice!
I'm of a harsh opinion that anyone believing in piracy as a right, and looking upon copyright protection, fake leaks, DLC content and stuff like that as a dick-move needs to have some serious rectal massage, preferably executed by a large specimen of Ferocactus Glaucescens. Assuming you'd actually fit it in there of course, what with their head being lodged up there and all.
One commonly used pro-piracy argument is the "downloading it is not affecting their income". Well hellooooooo, did you get an F- in maths on junior high or something? Of course it's affecting their income. The more people downloading, the lesser the income gets. Luckily, you also have (stupid) people that don't know about the wonders of the intertubes, as well as those who actually have the gallancy to support the creators, so most big-name publishers and artists still get a largely satisfactory amount of income. But still, stealing from Bill Gates isn't cool, even though it might be cooler than stealing from some random homeless guy.
Pro piracy argument #2: "Games/albums/movies are too expensive/I can't afford them." Well boo-hoo and et cetera, I guess some people just happen to be more well-off than others by cruel happenstance. I suggest you live with it. And another thing; one of the main reasons behind prices spiking is infact piracy. Think about it, a company develops a game and set themselves a satisfactory goal for their income. However, piracy is very likely and they must take that into account, so they up the price of the game to match their goal. Simple economics, really.
Numero 3: "There's no laws against it." Well at this time, I'm pretty sure there are some kinds of laws against it in just about the whole world now, maybe apart from in some diffuse banana-countries, but they are probably more worried about keeping their kids fed than finding the complete Season 6 set of House. Besides, I refuse to believe that any sane person can actually say "it's never bad if it's not directly against a law". Pissing in the soup-bowl during a family-dinner party probably isn't against any written laws, but you still refrain from doing it though because then you'd be a fucking twat.
I guess my final point in all this would have to be; there are norms. I'm not gonna go on an all-out critique on those who download pirated content, after all, that'd make me a hypocrite, as well as being guilty as hell, but, pirating is NOT. YOUR. RIGHT. We are dicks for being pirates. People work for creating the end project that we're so comfortably grabbing for free. Realize this, don't argue that you're being hard done whenever companies come up with a clever new method of making it harder for distributors of warez. It surely does nothing good, other than revealing said person's true colours:
They're idiots.
And egosentric ones at that.
Sincerely,
~CMon, "yoho, yoho, a pirate's life for me"
Last edited by CMon; Oct 12, 2009 at 12:18 AM.
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