I have ~530 movies and TV shows (I don't save current ones because they can be found quite easily), 30887 songs from so many artists that I don't know about a lot of them, ebooks, etc. Interestingly I have few programs because I use linux mostly.

My view is this: If your whatever is good enough, I will see it, or get you money somehow. I have a 50 dollar iTunes giftcard, and bought a few Pink Floyd, Jonathan Coulton, CSN&Y albums (etc) simply to get them some money.

If movies and music weren't so ridiculously priced I wouldn't have so much trouble paying, but I don't have enough money to pay for my habits. When I download some music from somebody I try to download their discography. I then share it with my friends, increasing your odds of getting money.

In short, I support it, just so long as you pay the people who make things back eventually (screw the middle men).

What we don't allow is discussion of HOW to pirate. There's a difference.

I'm against pirating games - that money is needed to develop new games. Game piracy just helps kill the industry.

I'm against pirating movies - largely the same reasons as above.

I'm *FOR* pirating music - the artists don't get that money anyway, so pirate the CDs and go to their concerts. Artists get more money that way anyway.

I'm not against pirating TV shows *so long as* there isn't a free online method of viewing the show. For example, you can't watch the newest episodes of Top Gear (a BBC show) here in the states without pirating them. However, you can watch the latest episodes of, say, Chuck online for free - so absolutely watch it from NBC's site or Hulu. That way your view gets counted, and you help keep that show going.

And that crap about it being old or that you don't have the money is absolutely not an excuse. If its impossible to find outside of a torrent (or used), then sure.

BBC/Sky1 shows were one of the things I implicitly referenced. SyFy runs about 6 weeks behind the brit's, or at least it has in the past with Doctor Who + Torchwood. My British friends record + upload it to an http server.



When was the last time you found a copy of War Games anywhere? ^_^

also, right on target w.r.t. music. When I saw Carbon Leaf and Stephen Kellog & The Sixers in concert earlier this fall, they both told us to feel free to pirate their songs as long as we come to their shows and buy stuff from the merch table.

that was on either Encore or Cinemax just last week (I have those channels on my dish network)

EDIT: the 2 biggest games I pirated are World of Warcraft and The Sims 2 *all exp packs*

the game I mostly play right now due to recent events here is UT2K4

only legit (retail) game I play right now is...Diablo 2

actually, I think Diablo 2 is the only legit retail game (out of a hundred PC games litterally) that I have installed.

one moment, I found another legit retail game on my laptop Ghost Master and Red Alert 2 Yuri's Revenge (using the Balance of Power : Beyond Revenge mod)

Its on Amazon (and Netflix).

Nobody involved in the production of that project is benefiting from either of those sources. As for piracy killing the industry(whether it be movie or game), that's a complete load. That very (propaganda) video you post proves it's been around for as long as computers, and no developers or producers have gone out of business(or even come close) because of it. All this anti-piracy garbage is just a bunch of rich white douchebags whining about their "lost" profits. Boo freaking Hoo.

Uh, a *TON* of game publishers have gone out of business, including ones that put out some great games. Games are also getting more and more expensive to create, causing the impact of piracy to get worse and worse.

Just look around, the number of "safe" sequel titles is through the roof while new IP is getting harder and harder to find.

Name one developer that consistently made great games and still went out of business. Name one Publisher that consistently marketed decent games well and still went out of business.

Piracy also keeps developer's work alive, as it creates a huge networked archive of everything anybody ever released that was even half-decent. Developers come and go(the "go" usually comes from making a crap game) but their greatest achievements are preserved for as long as people pirate. And with the unchecked power of DRMs like SecuRom, it isn't safe to legally buy PC games anymore. I still buy console games(which for some reason don't have these retarded restrictions even though it's just as easy to pirate them) but if I want a PC game, I'm going to pirate it until retail copies become safe once again.

Steam would be the only exception, as steam doesn't lie to me and put shit on my computer without my permission, so I'll buy games over steam.

List of things I've pirated:
MS-DOS 6.22
Windows for Workgroups 3.11
Windows NT 3.51 Workstation
OS/2 Warp 3 or 4
Windows 95 w/ Plus!

It's much less than I expected, actually. All of this probably counts as abandonware.

Well, generally, yes. In some cases, no. Some games on Steam, despite having the great protection offered by Steam itself, still use one or more alternative 'validation' methods. For examples, go look at Far Cry 2 or Bioshock 2. Both of those use SecuROM in addition to whatever Steam provides (look at the game details block on the right side of the page).

Yes, Steam is nice, but it's not totally free from the silliness of some DRM schemes. My personal policy is not to buy anything on Steam that uses any DRM scheme aside from what's provided by Steam.

No, I'm not going to play that game with you, were I give you the name of a developer and you claim the game wasn't great.



No. You can try and rationalize it, but it still isn't valid. Pirating games also starves the industry of money it could use to expand. Whether or not piracy actually *KILLS* the industry is not the point (which is what you are focused on), the point is that it *IS* starving the industry of revenue it otherwise would have had. Crysis, for example, did relatively poorly in sales despite being a great game and now Crytek is going to develop for consoles as well. One of the last companies to push the limits is now going to make console ports, yippee!

even though theres piracy, there are still MILLIONS if not BILLIONS of people who still purchase the games...so I doubt piracy is starving the industry.

Take your pick.



When was the last time you needed a modchip for a PC?

There aren't billions, that's for a sure (nowhere near it). But that's irrelevant, as that is yet another baseless rationalization that simply is not valid. The simple fact is that if you pirate a game that is less money that supports game development. Period, end of story.

And we've already seen the smaller niche genres shrinking if not entirely disappearing. Sim games are a perfect example - there used to be dozens of good flight and race sim games, now there are almost no new ones. Even the excellent Civilization series hasn't had a new game since 2005.

Crysis sold poorly because nobody could freaking run it. But that doesn't change the fact that retail PC games aren't safe as long as there are retarded(and sometimes dangerous) DRM systems, and that's a HUGE part of what drives people to pirate. The industry is effectively starving itself, or at least making it much worse.

lol:

youtube+mediaconverter and/or zamzar = win
XD

Crysis scaled pretty well, much better than most games. The problem is that people felt bad if they could only run it on "low" or "medium" rather than "very high", even though Crysis's "low" still looked better than most games on "high".

That's actually pretty fail; youtube quality is sh*t.

I pirated Music and some movies till last May when my brother got caught and mediacom gave us a warning that if it happened again then we were going to be charged $200,000.