Reasons for piracy

[Shifty2105]

I was reading a news article about the shutting down of media sharing site mega upload when i came across a paragraph quoting valves co founder Gabe Newell and his thoughts on piracy:

 

Valve’s Gabe Newell said it best, “Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem.” Users flock to sites like MegaUpload, TVShack, and in the past, Napster, because they offer additional functionality and convenience. Look at Netflix, RDIO, MOG, Spotify: They all charge a fee for access to the same material that can be downloaded freely. People who care about their time don’t bother to download illegally. These services thrive because they offer the utmost in convenience, which is something the media companies have failed to provide yet.

 

I found his views a good reflection on the success of valve's digital distribution platform "Steam". Steam is estimated to have a 70% share in the digital distribution market for video games. It provides a social aspect to gaming where you can communicative and keep track with what you friends are doing. That combined with the access to approximately 1500 games is, in my opinion, what makes it so successful.

 

I would like to hear your opinions.

 

The full news article can be found here: http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/20/megaupload-computer-abuse-reinforcement-education/

[Deathmineral]

I pretty much agree with Gabe's view on piracy. Service is the bigger issue for sure I think, though price isn't necessarily irrelevant either, it also plays a role in piracy.

 

He says it best with his example of the Russian market.

 

It seems other games companies who had tried to penetrate Russia hadn’t done so due to a the infamous levels of piracy. “The people who are telling you that Russians pirate everything are the people who wait six months to localize their product into Russia,” said Newell. “It doesn’t take much in terms of providing a better service to make pirates a non-issue.”

 

 

This is often the biggest reason for piracy. I know this because I pirate tons of stuff, and majority of the time, it's because that product isn't offered in my area or in my language or something like that.

 

There are times where I pirate stuff because of the price as well though, for example, software that costs more than a car, I will most likely never be able to afford it.

 

Then there is a particularly funny reason for piracy, there are those cases where piracy is in fact a result of DRM, the thing meant to stop piracy actually encourages piracy, you would think the companies using it would catch on but I don't mind it myself, I enjoy humor in that kind of irony.

 

Finally, you have the simplest reason of all, because they want to. That's all there is to it for some people really, they just want to pirate stuff. Even if they can afford it, and have no reason to not be buying it, they'd rather just pirate it. Could be they aren't even going to use it, they just pirate it for the fun of pirating it. It's really quite the simplest reason of them all, but at the same time it's not really a reason you can understand either.

 

Well... I reckon that's enough jibber jabber from me, it should be exciting to see what others have to say, oh and the anti-piracy folks on OCC, what a hoot, I can't wait.

[Muchoman1]

my reasons for piracy are

 

1) professional level software that i use for personal uses, that require taking out a second mortgage to get (if i ever use these for financial gain i will buy them, of course)

 

2) i already own the game on the xbox 360 (mine rrod a while back which drove me to building my gaming rig) ive already paid for the game, i still have the disc, so i dont think its wrong to download it for pc

 

3) older games and roms (just downloaded the old final fantasy's with emulators to play) many of these fall under catagory 2, and those that dont are so old and rare to find i download it

 

all new games that i have i buy off steam, and most of the time i just wait for the producer packs, with a heap of games for 50 bucks. the only new game i bought full price was skyrim

 

 

i know others may have different views, cause i technically am pirating it, but i dont consider anything wrong with these cases.

[90sgamer]

Yep, I think DRM is a factor in encouraging piracy as opposed to stopping it. If I still pirated software (I don't anymore) I would probably have downloaded cracked versions of games like Risen and Anno 2070 because of their utterly retarded 3 time TOTAL activation limit. This is exasperating to me because I regularly reinstall my OS, and this means I am unable to play my legally bought game after 3 installs.

 

The cracked version, on the other hand, would have no such limitation and I could install it as many times as I like. This is one of the main reasons I adamantly support GOG.com and their DRM free standpoint.

Edited January 22, 2012 by 90sgamer

[Psywar]

I agree with pretty much everything I read in this thread..

I agree with Gabe's point from Valve.

 

It truly is a convenience thing for me.. I tend not to do it as much anymore now that they have been heavily cracking down on it.

Movies.. Sometimes I don't have the time or even more so no one to go see a movie with. So the next and easiest thing is to download it.

Really the only movies I would consider borrowing would be the movies currently in the theater OR a movie you cannot find anywhere.

 

I don't illegally download games because if there is a game I want I can usually buy it right from the site and do a Digital Download.

 

Software I have to agree with Muchoman1.. I have not borrowed much software, but the stuff I have costs upwards to 1000 bucks. I think that is ridiculous.

I never really had a big problem with DRM until recently.

 

I used to use iTunes for all my music about 6 years ago when I started going legit with music.. I just recently converted all my music over to Google Music and I am having a huge issue with all my old iTunes songs that have DRM encoded in them.

Short Version... I cannot listen to these songs on my Google/Android Device because they only work on my Apple stuff due to the DRM. That kind of ticks me off. Luckily it was only about 50 tracks and I re-downloaded most of them for .49cents on Google's Market.

On the other hand that is like 25 more dollars I had to spend out of my own pocket of media I already owned.. I know I could have burned it to a cd and then re-ripped the tracks.. Again though it goes back to the convenience thing.. It was easier for me to just re-buy the tracks and slap them on the cloud.

[VaporX]

I agree with Gabe's idea on how to reduce piracy, I think he is spot on and we said as much on yesterdays show. The way to curb piracy is not about laws but a change in the fiscal model used by the industries. However that being said the reasoning behind piracy is crap. People can come up with all the excuses they want but think about this, you are knowingly stealing for a movie, a song or a game or piece of software. We are not talking about stealing food to eat or something ti heat in the cold. We are not talking about needs but pure wants. When it comes to piracy the old saying applies, excuses are like bung holes, everyone has them and they all STINK!

 

People at the end of the day pirate for a single reason they feel they deserve something. They thing a company owes them the product or a lower price or other some such BS and then steal the item because they are not give what they are owed.

 

Now just for the record for years I was a huge pirate. I had massive collections of video games and music as well as more movies than I could ever watch. However I decided one day that all my excuses for doing this were not holding up and dumped it all to see if I was right. I have never looked back since and have missed nothing. My music needs are easily met by Pandora, my video needs I find I can easily meet with Hulu and Netflix. My gaming needs are simple to meet by waiting for sales, than you STEAM, or playing some of the many good F2P games out there. As for my productivity software, this is my job hence it is worth the effort for me to save for it to buy the best and I have. However even there I found great ways to legal buy at steep discounts.

 

While it is true the movie and music industry have blown up the impact of piracy out of proportion, the same level of truth exists that the computing world has minimized the impact out of proportional as well. Our tolerance of such behavior is just as bad as the draconian methods the music industry has tried to push through as laws onto us. We are as guilty as they in screwing this all up. See we can reduce piracy just as the industry can. They must change the way they think and get out of their old business model, accepting a mew model for distribution. We must also change the way we think, we must stop letting pirates think of themselves and our treating of them as funny little sub culture and call them what they are, thieves. We need to apply pier pressure to them and make it socially unacceptable for this kind of behavior and those two methods combined would greatly reduce piracy.

 

Now would it stop it? Of course not there is always a dung hole in the world that feels he is entitled to anything he wants and he can steal as he wishes. However can can curb the numbers to just the dung holes of the world.

[_TheAlexO]

I feel like this is all we talk about on OCC anymore. Piracy. SOOO BORING

[VaporX]

AlexO I understand and actually agree but this is a big issue for the computing world right now. Plus lets face it the hardware news scene for the last year has been lackluster at best. We could always talk about Skyrim

[_TheAlexO]

AlexO I understand and actually agree but this is a big issue for the computing world right now. Plus lets face it the hardware news scene for the last year has been lackluster at best. We could always talk about Skyrim

 

That's what I'm sayin, Skyrim FTW

[NikoDG]

I used to love Skyrim, but then I got raped by a giant...

[DanTheGamer11]

I wish I could pirate the Onlive app for android even though it's free cause I can't download it cause of my network... I'll pirate GTA 3 10th anniversary too cause 1.2 makes it lag on Xperia Plays...

[Muchoman1]

I agree with Ed on some things, but for games you already own but can no longer use due to things like broken discs or Microsofts inability to properly cool its products, I believe is perfectly fine to do so