Saw this few days back on a poll



Firstly I would like to list few practical reasons why you should not pirate copyright content.
1. Legally brought software/media/games gives you stability as if you have downloaded a pirated software, chances are your software will become unusable when next update is applied to it.

2. It saves a lot of storage space. When you buy a boxed copy or digital download of a piece of software, you’re not only forking over dough you’re paying so that you’ll never have to worry about obtaining another copy of your software again.
Boxed software can be stored on a shelf, you’ll be allowed to download a copy of any previously purchased software from an online vendor like Steam, Direct2Drive or Microsoft time and time again.
Recently GOG.com started a “The DRM-free initiative” which allows owners of several retail titles originally sold with DRM to get a digital copy of their game completely free at GOG.com: with no DRM as always, compatible with modern operating systems, and with plenty of goodies to boot.
For starters you can reclaim your CD-Key of Boxed version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

3. Updates are free. It saves your time to wait for pirated updated version.

4. With today’s technologies, it’s getting harder and harder to authenticate pirated software with the publishing house servers.
Remember the recent videogame “The Talos Principle” ? It has a funny and clever way to punish pirates. It locks the players in an elevator and have them stay there.

5. Pirated software are an awesome delivery system for viruses and malware.
In a mess of software blackhat hacker and scriptkiddie will simply label their wares something tempting like ‘Microsoft Office 360’ or ‘Grand Theft Auto V’ and watch unwary pirates do what they do.

6. Legally brought software provides free tech support.
If you’re rocking pirated software, you can still ask for help online from other users through any number of forums, but beyond that you’ll be out of luck.

7. If you brought it then you have not to worry about legal issues.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re taking video, audio, or software (or audio/video software for that matter,) piracy can land you in a whole lot of hot water.
In 1998, the United States passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act – a piece of legislation that makes it illegal to circumvent DRM measures put in place by content creators and publishers.
To keep things more or less on the same page, the European Union passed a similar set of laws in 2001.
Despite changes made to the American DMCA last year to legitimize the ripping of CDs, DVDs and other select forms of digital media for personal use, make no mistake, big business is still deadly serious about suing to protect their investments.
Don’t drop a ton of coin on your legal defence: just pay for what you play instead.

8. Piracy is killing PC Gaming (Sorry Gordon.)
Few months before, word came down from the DRM-loving scamps at Ubisoft that one of their most anticipated titles won’t be released for PC due to—you guessed it—piracy concerns.
Looking at the numbers, you have to admit, those fears are well founded.

When 2D Boy’s World of Goo was released for the PC sans DRM, the developers noted that as reward for trusting gamers not to pirate their creation, they were suffering a 90% piracy rate.
Then there’s Crysis: A title pirated to such epic proportions that the game’s development, which was at one time devoted solely to developing for the PC, was forced to swear off PC-only development if it wanted to stand a chance of securing anything resembling fiscal sustainability.

If you’re tired of crappy console-to-PC ports, Xbox 360 or PS3 exclusives titles and long for the days when PC Gaming reigned supreme, stop pirating and start buying.
It’s still not too late to turn things around.

9. Piracy leads to slows R&D efforts.
No matter how you spin it, for the most part, software development is a business like any other.
When a developer’s product flies off of store shelves or is downloaded through legitimate channels, developers and publishers are motivated to cultivate improvements to their wares, be it in the form of additional content or service packs or an entirely new edition of a popular application.
Conversely, more piracy means less money for developers and publishers.
This translates into less motivation to produce add-ons, patches or hot-fixes for existing titles, and in some cases, as too few people are buying what they’re selling, there’s no money in the pipe to be used for future development efforts.

10. If you are pirating then you’re screwing developers.
Perhaps out of all of our legitimate reasons not to pirate, the fact that you’re screwing hard working developers over every time you download a pirated ware is the most important.
When it comes to software, most titles represent months, if not years of someone’s daily work.
If you’ve opted to swipe a copy of an indie house gem, you’re benefitting from the passions of perhaps a few individuals without paying them a reasonable dollar value for the the hours and hours of their personal time poured into their product.
If enough people illegally download software from large publishing houses like EA or Ubisoft or Microsoft, the dollar value of the revenue lost to pirating is often compensated for by initiating lay-offs of the development teams that worked hard enough to make something awesome enough to steal in the first place.
With tough economic times quickly becoming the norm, rather than the exception, it’s easy to justify the theft of intellectual property, but screwing over your fellow geeks in the name of saving a few bucks? That’s harsh.

That were things why one should not do piracy!
But I am a pirate.
Why?
Because Piracy is the only cheapest way to get the games/media I want.
I do buy things now and again though, Steam sales mean I buy games that otherwise, I’d have pirated.
I always buy and giveaway things I buy from Humble Bundle. It’s the way I do charity.
iTunes isn’t an appealing service to me. All music I listen to it Pirated.

I do however, have a Code of Honour which is

All games from big companies = Pirated unless cheap. Also Repacked Games are much smaller than the Official Legal version.
Like Outlast(2.8 GB)+Outlast: Whistelblower DLC(1.9 GB) where as it’s Repacked version has just 2.79GB.

Indie titles= If I see an indie title I like, I will investigate and perhaps make a purchase.
I genuinely feel bad pirating Indie games.

Music = I do buy some albums, but I can’t afford all the ones I want and generally, I cannot afford to go to a concert to see bands like Maiden due to the high prices.

Films = Movies on Digital/BluRay Media is pricy and huge. Instead I can find Bluray RIPs which are coded in HEVC 265x and have quality with less size. It saves my time to re-encode.

Software = Few software are not worth of their price and few of them are so expensive that they may cost you an arm and leg.

In conclusion, I can’t consume this media legally. So, inevitably, I will pirate.
Also few of the points above are pirated. ;)
Right now I am downloading the whole Daredevil Season 1 which was Netflix exclusive!

I can give one very good reason to pirate.

If someone buys (and OWNS) a game, but because of some DRM reason can no longer play it, they have every "right" to pirate it. In fact, IMO, I wouldn't blame anyone who downloads a pirated version of every game they buy legitimately just to get around the PITA DRM that only makes things difficult for paying customers while not stopping pirating at all.

If they don't sell those games in my country, then I have no reason to not support, but if I get to see any console games in this damn wasteland I might as well put a 10 feet pole up my ass, the inflation here is so bad it costs 80.000 to buy a fucking Wii, and PC games are only pirated, they don't sell originals in here except for original console games.

So I am have a valid reason, there is no market here (unless we are talking digital)
And even then I have to work my legs up the south to get old videogames, since they are 400 which is usually rather cheap, but it's a game from 2 decades ago so......yeah

I have to agree with others. While many pirate because they just don't want to pay, I found myself on sites because I have.

We have nearly 300 DVD's of films and TV series. Finding the a film and waiting to go through 5 minutes of adverts was just too much, so I built a 4TB server. Ripping them was going to take time, so I put my broadband to good use. All good till had 2 drives fail in quick succession.

With games it been games I already own, or have purchased after getting a less than legal copy.

I have however found a Steam Emulator, that should help me not need such action.

I think it's wrong to rob ships and murder everyone on board.

I myself am an admitted occasional pirate, for occasions such as when importing the soundtrack to a game would either be impossible due to one never having been produced, or implausible because who is going to pay over 10 bucks for a CD? And no, looking for digital releases isn't an option because I'm pretty dang sure there isn't a digital version of the Illusion of Gaia soundtrack, thankyouverymuch.

Some games such as Starbound, (of whom are stuck in feature creep) I've pirated for the sake of getting to try them out because there's no excuse for a closed platform beta in a post Minecraft world.

The Sims 3 is a case where, 'I ain't got the time/money for that', because buying all the expansions would cost somewhere in the range of 500$. But since it turned out to be a crashy and buggy mess, I eventually got rid of it after a while. I kept a screenshot for posteriorerity.

Before I move onto console games and aim a shotgun at them, I do find myself a lover of abandonware. There's just one game I'm afraid I'll never find again, and that's Flight Unlimited. As far as I'm concerned, if the original developer closes house, and the game is out of print, its free game. It no longer is free game the moment it gets put on GOG. I've specifically bought games that I'd previously been using invalid. Like Re-Volt and Worms 2. (Most others I actually owned or never had before.) Now, that's not to say there aren't a few ""Active"" companies I've lifted from such as Jazz Jackrabbit 2 from the husk of Epic Games. (And Princess Maker 2 from Gainax)

Most 8 and 16 bit video games from consoles are basically free game seeing as not only is the alternative a fair bit expensive to a laughably large investment, but it turns out I'm not a massive enough nerd to go track down a NES, a SNES, a 64, and so on, along with the increasingly scarce and expensive games. Also, the emulation prospects on official channels are PATHETIC. I've gone on various rants on how terribly limited Nintendo's Virtual Console is, but its far worse for the Eurozone players.

Now I'm not a crazy nut who tries to make his games look like an ugly-arse fuzzy cheap CRT, because I played my games with a solid video signal and screens were not warped like a soap bubble. As it turns out, my square pixels were square pixels. So the screen filtering nonsense, I don't really desire. But networking, colorful borders, tweak options, and settings that have been standard in emulators since the 90s, is something of a MASSIVE SHORTCOMING on the official channels. All I'm trying to say is that they don't offer enough features to make them worth the 5-8+ price tag, and ain't nothin gonna save Urbane Champeen. Also, did I mention that I used to own a majority of the games I've lifted? (I had over 90 unique NES games) I'm not about to go track down a copy of 'Rygar' just so I can play it digitally.

Seeing as I've never been interested in film, I don't pirate it. I just Netflix instead and listen to the major studios writhe. NEXT.

I've never really pirated boring old software because for my needs, a F/OSS alternative will do the job as good, if not better.

As a bottom line, I put digital preservation over Publisher/Developer stupidity, stinginess, shortsightedness, and overall inability to provide for loving fans young and old.

Corporations make enough to lie about their losses and gain from that deception. I don't "pirate", but neither do I especially care when people do so. The fact is that there are far larger numbers buying product, than pirating product. They use the DRM excuse to cover their @$$es for shareholders.

Example-

Shareholder= where can I make a profit and feel good about giving a total stranger my cash?
Corp.=ME! I can take your money JackA....auuuhhhhhh....friend! ^_^
Shareholder= So uh....what guarantee do I have you won't lose the cash I give you?
Corp.= Simple we f**k the customer base up the butt so hard they don't know what hittem and permanently damage their personal property so that it is controlled like a parasite by us!!! oh and MUAHAHAHAHAhahahahahahahaaaaa!!!!
Shareholder= Well gee golly that sounds fantastic, take my money!


The reality is even when such hot topic titles rake in a good amount of money. The company that made it usually goes under because they don't see much in the way of profit margins as they tend to be beholden the a bigger company.

Like how Fallout 3 on PC was allowed to circumvent the DRM, like intentionally. But then the umbrella company that owns them like slaves slapped Steam onto their games to prevent such shenanigans by the developers.

Then of course we have a legion of retards who suck the corporate sack so long they actually flatout enjoy DRM on product even when nobody gives a crap lol

When I was a kid I used to pirate left and right. When I finally got a job and got myself a card, my outlook changed. It helps that I'm in a somewhat related industry so I know how it feels to not be paid for my work. Nowadays, the only things I pirate are the ones hard to buy legally from my country and the ones with annoying DRM.

^

He use to be a pirate, until he took a credit account to the....oh wait, what? >_>
*wink*

The older I get, the less I believe in this sort of crap coming from publishers.
The single fact that Ubisoft is involved is enough to know that it's pure greed we're talking about. The company that launches 2 Assassin's Creed games a year. Same game, different scenarios. The series should've been called Assassin's Milk by now, considering how Ubisoft milks the franchise until it's dry.

It's Ubisoft's Creed.

Hmm, my opinion about piracy... Well, I think that it's ultimately wrong to hijack someone's boat and loot things of value if they don't belong to you and possibly kill them because it's probably going to catch up to you some day one way or another. Right when you least expect it the US Navy shows up with one of their new destroyers outfitted with that high powered laser and takes out your escape boat. Long way to shore and there are sharks in the water. Then they also have that microwave raygun thing they use for non-lethal crowd control that can damage the eyes too, that could be nasty.

Yeah, definitely don't become a pirate, but feel free to celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day each year. Arrr!

Generally, when I pirate, I make sure the game is no longer on sale(if it is, I'll generally save up for it unless I don't need to) but games for instance like Army Men II, or Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds(THANKS GOG FOR BRINGING IT BACK!!!!!!!!!) I'd pirate.

if I find a game on GOG(even if I had it pirated) I try to buy it here, but I'll still buy from Steam too.

most games I have pirated though are generally forgotten(Imperium Galactica II, Army Men II, Army Men World War, etc...)