calling people names, etc
Why people pirate games
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calling people names, etc
Veraster
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Reasons or not, software piracy is illegal. I think it's much better buy all your stuff than run the risk of being the straw that broke the camel's back and making governments just put a stop to it once and for all by censoring the internet or making it legal to invade everyone's privacy without a warrant.
I personally don't mind paying for my stuff. It's just fair. What I don't like is that they force you to be constantly connected to a stable internet connection for playing certain offline games and permitting limited "activations" (like that ridiculous Windows activation thing) or other draconian methods of what they think is stopping pirates. Another thing they do is milk DLC and make the base games pure crap without the DLC. Pirates are only going to make cracks and bypass all that stuff. It might slow them down by a few days but hackers are creative. In the end they are only punishing the paying consumer.
So piracy is wrong. The consequences are that video game and other software developers take bigger and bigger dumps on consumers every release because they're worried about piracy and governments get closer and closer to passing laws that might destroy the internet and/or permit invading privacy.
I personally don't mind paying for my stuff. It's just fair. What I don't like is that they force you to be constantly connected to a stable internet connection for playing certain offline games and permitting limited "activations" (like that ridiculous Windows activation thing) or other draconian methods of what they think is stopping pirates. Another thing they do is milk DLC and make the base games pure crap without the DLC. Pirates are only going to make cracks and bypass all that stuff. It might slow them down by a few days but hackers are creative. In the end they are only punishing the paying consumer.
So piracy is wrong. The consequences are that video game and other software developers take bigger and bigger dumps on consumers every release because they're worried about piracy and governments get closer and closer to passing laws that might destroy the internet and/or permit invading privacy.
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PP Mguire
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Apparently you didn't understand a thing I said. I will say this and leave it at this since you apparently can't comprehend what I'm saying.
They steal from us and that is ok? But it's not ok for me to copy what somebody else already paid for. Sure, some logic you got going there. Don't expect a reply from me to you as you are incapable of logical discussion.
The point I made before was developers were taking strides to limit your usage before piracy could even be a problem. Their blame is piracy to control and limit what you can and can't do with your lease. Like you said, crackers will always get around it. Consumers of all kinds are suffering because this "war on piracy" which will never stop. Ever. People who pay the extra price and suffer their delusions are only buying in to the companies greed.
As for internet censorship, the American government wants to control all and the biggest thing right now is the internet. Right now they are being held back by certain issues but since good ol Obama is back in office another 4 years I give him a year tops and Murican internet will be controlled by the government. Piracy is what they have to go forth with their argument and it's fueled by people like Lar1121. My opinion and stance on this wont change unless SOPA creator is taken out of our government.
All that is beside the point anyways. The OP obviously had a problem due to ****ty QA and optimization and that is largely due to carelessness on the developer side. The whole point of my argument on piracy. I don't want to pay for **** so why should I? I pay for games that deserve it. Some people just can't see the logic behind it whether it's morally acceptable or not. I simply do not care. People make piracy out to be like it's grand theft auto (no pun intended). It isn't. No money is lost if you weren't going to purchase the material to begin with. Thievery in its purest form is busting a window and stealing a car, taking a candy bar, taking money from a friends wallet, walking out on a diner, ect. People make downloading out to be as bad as these things. It simply isn't, end of story.
Before this thread takes a dive or I get an infraction I'm leaving this discussion. My opinion is there, I don't need to state it any further.
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WeFixComputers
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That sucks man 
@pp- whoa there slick, ur panties are all bunched up. Don't take it out on me because you can't sleep at night because of your piracy problem.
In all seriousness, I understand what your saying, but again I do not agree with you because of my morals. It is stealing, you are trying to justify it because you do it yourself, again whatever helps you sleep at night. It is still not right, nor legal. Good luck with that argument cuz I don't buy it for a second
In all seriousness, I understand what your saying, but again I do not agree with you because of my morals. It is stealing, you are trying to justify it because you do it yourself, again whatever helps you sleep at night. It is still not right, nor legal. Good luck with that argument cuz I don't buy it for a second
A couple of points here:
1. Piracy has always been an issue. It's just that it has become most noticeable with torrent sites. There were NPD BBSes back in the day (most of which required knowing people to gain access to them), but they typically required high-speed modems and often ran off one phone line, severely limiting the impact of piracy. The Internet came along and that evolved into Web sites hosted in other countries where copyright / piracy laws were less strict or non-existent but, again, the impact was at least somewhat limited since that was still back in the days of dial-up. Torrenting and the broader use of broadband made piracy more prominent since now there's an app as well as easier ways to find applications, and since download speeds are so much faster.
2. PP's point is at least somewhat valid. There is no physical act of theft - there is no actual loss of a tangible item which cost money to print or manufacture (i.e. boxes, burning to CD, printing CDs, etc.). It is theft of intellectual property, but you'll notice that most charges filed in such cases are not shoplifting, theft, burglary, etc. The law generally seems to regard it as something closer to larceny, and a crime which usually has its own laws to address the weirdness inherent in stealing something that doesn't actually seem to exist in a tangible way.
Abandonware often seems to fall into a gray area. Some sites like Good Old Games repackage classic games, update them so they can run on modern operating systems, and ensure that folks get paid. If a legitimate site is packaging games and folks are still pirating them, that's clearly bogus. (And seriously, Good Old Games is rad. The games are licensed, legal downloads and they just work.) There are other sites which host or link to abandonware; the best of these are legitimately interested in preserving the games in question, and instantly update links to direct users to legitimate, paid download sites like Good Old Games if the titles become available there or through the publisher or developer's sites.
This is why I ALWAYS prefer having a copy of the disc in hand, and burn downloaded MP3s to DVDs and back them up religiously. Digital distribution has a number of flaws inherent in the system; failing to let users download replacement copies after hard drive crashes, etc. is foremost among them.
There are a lot of reasons people pirate. Some pirate software because they can't afford it, or want to try it before buying and can't find a demo. Some people simply don't want to pay for something they think they can get for free. Some people try to justify / rationalize piracy as part of an ideology or political stance (i.e. software should be free). Some people, including at least one post in the this thread, try to justify piracy by saying that they shouldn't have to pay for a port that doesn't look good. I read an article on ... Forbes, I think it was ... not too long ago about the Dark Souls PC port, in which someone was quoted saying, effectively, that they were going to pirate the game because it wasn't sufficiently high resolution for them.
There are a lot of reasons people pirate. There aren't just two.
This is so astonishingly unlikely that it barely warrants comment, but:
1. Trying to censor the Internet would pretty much break it. There's no shortage of technical analyses of this related to SOPA / PIPA, and the EFF's site is a good place to start reading about why this is pretty much technically impossible.
2. Making it legal to invade everyone's privacy without a warrant is also astonishingly unlikely. While law always takes time to catch up with technology, there is no shortage of lawyers and organizations who would go to war - and have - over such things.
Check out an article on Forbes - I believe Erik Kain wrote it and the title is something like "Why You Will Never Kill Piracy (And Piracy Will Never Kill You)." You might find it interesting to read, if you haven't already read it.
This point is spot on. We have to deal with always-on DRM, not because it actually does anything to prevent piracy, but because publishers think it does. A while back, a music publisher managed to install a root kit as part of their copy prevention technology to prevent ripping songs to MP3 (which, for the record, is not actually piracy - the law around music has allowed for making backup copies for some time, and the same was true for software, although I'm no longer sure if that's the case). Publishers are taking draconian measures which harm consumers but fail to do anything about piracy. Interestingly, CD Projekt had a curious reaction to The Witcher 2. When someone on 4chan said they were going to pirate the game, pretty much every other post called them a scumbag for even suggesting it since CD Projekt was trying to give their customers what they wanted - a DRM-free gaming experience which didn't require always-on Internet, etc.
In other words, the only people harmed by anti-piracy measures are the consumers who actually pay for the product.
To me, the more interesting issue is the conflict between developers who are increasingly focused on consoles and long-term PC gamers who feel (and can often factually prove) that they are now getting an inferior product. That conflict can take the form of people refusing to pay for what they see as (and which may actually be) an inferior version or one that does not make full use of a computer's capabilities, but that action typically encourages a developer to spend LESS time making ports if they bother to do it at all because the developer sees - rightly or wrongly - they simply aren't going to make as much money on a PC port, especially if people announce (as apparently occurred with the Dark Souls port) PRIOR TO RELEASE that they intend to pirate it.
A quick glance at VGChartz' sales figures makes the contrast even worse because in nearly every case in which a game is available for a console and PC, the PC sales are virtually non-existent. Taking Modern Warfare 3 as an example, console versions have sold about 27 million copies (I'm excluding the Wii). The PC version has sold a bit over 1.5 million. Battlefield 3 is a bit closer, with a bit over 12 million copies sold for console, and a little over 2 million for PC. A quick look at Fallout 3 continues to show a similar sales trend, but most PC copies were apparently sold in Europe. Of the 830,000-odd copies sold on PC, 770,000 were sold in the EU.
So this begs the question - regardless of why people pirate, console game sales are increasing relative to PC sales, and considering that a substantial amount of piracy occurs on the PC side (combined with the comments justifying piracy as a response to what people see as an inferior product as games get ported to PC), how much longer will developers even bother with PC gaming, or porting a game to PC when the sales keep falling and piracy seems to be increasing?
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Veraster
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What about this "six strike" program that ISPs are using in the US? ISPs can somehow track what people do on the internet. The US government didn't issue any warrant allowing ISPs to spy on their customers did it? Yet ISPs are still doing it. Now I'm worried that:
- I might get personal information stolen by some hacker
- I might have my bank information stolen by some hacker
- I'll get arrested because a computer connected to my router loaded a webpage with the word "torrent" on it or someone copy and pasted a copyrighted image something
I agree. One thing that you can do if you don't want to all-out pirate something like we do with our consoles, is buy the physical game and then pirate it which gives you seamless, unrestricted gameplay because of cracks. Plus, if it's not a steam game, you are allowed to reinstall it if your hard drive ever crashes.
Downloading an abstract software program isn't the same as stealing someone's car like you said. There's not really anything to steal in the first place any way. You are copying a game and making another copy. Stealing software would be to break into the developer's programming studio and jack all the hard drives with unreleased software in order to "steal" it which would physically take away any means of access.
Good idea. I will do the same. I agree with everything you said, sir.
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1. Your IP address has always been trackable, even if it's dynamic instead of static. Web sites often keep logs of IP addresses, and even if your IP address wasn't trackable, your MAC address (which uniquely identifies hardware components) is. You've assumed anonymity and privacy without verifying it or, apparently, taking steps to ensure that your browsing is private.
So, to state the obvious, that means every single Web site you've ever visited may have your IP address logged. The ISP, whose routers you use to access those sites, may have a record of every single site you've ever visited. This is not to say that they do, merely that they may, because the technology required to make the Internet work and get you to sites that you want to visit means keeping track of what IP address you're using at any given moment to get you to, for example, ESPN.com instead of Yahoo. The sites have to know that, as do routers, to serve up content that you request.
This ability to somehow track what you do on the Internet is how the Internet works. It's kinda fundamental and essential to the whole thing. You can use applications to sidestep a lot of it, but if you're that concerned about it, then the answer isn't getting worried about the architecture and how the Internet works, the answer is figuring out how to anonymize your traffic or not use the Internet.
2. The other three points ... wow. If you have a wired router, the only computers accessing it should be ones you know about. If you have a wireless router, it sounds like you might need to have someone come secure it for you so you don't have people using your router without you knowing.
2a. Torrents themselves are not illegal. It's simply a form of file distribution which is neutral as a technology. Load all the pages with the word torrent on them that you want (for the record, this is a page with the word torrent on it, so the Internet police may be knocking at your door soon, except there are no Internet police, nor can you be arrested for viewing a page with the word torrent on it). Torrents only violate the law when they are distributing copyrighted materials.
2b. Someone copying and pasting a copyrighted image, even if they're using your router, is highly unlikely to warrant charges or an arrest. The ONLY exception I can think of is if that image is illegal in and of itself. Again, secure your router.
2c. Yes, your information can be stolen. Be careful about sites you visit, encrypt your data, use SSL when sending credit card information and so on.
Sadly, I come here to chat about games, not tech. This thread was about why people engage in certain forms of illegal activity, and most of this post falls outside that discussion. However, I would strongly suggest that you look into some of the other forums here because this is a tech forum and you can probably find help to do things like anonymize your Web browsing, secure your personal information and lock down your router.
And the better news? If you don't have a router and simply plug your computer into the wall to access the Internet, you really don't have to worry about people using your connection for nefarious purposes. They could spoof your IP, but that isn't too difficult to unravel
Last, I'm not aware of any six strike program at a policy / government level. Some ISPs and providers have a three strike policy, others have a zero tolerance policy, etc. So what about it? As a final comment, the DMCA has some bearing on ISPs and providers, because it allows content owners - or people who claim to own the content but actually have no stake in it - to file takedown notices, etc. to remove copyrighted materials. Perhaps that's what you're talking about, but it's really only relevant if you're hosting copyrighted content for download.
In other words, the stuff you're concerned about falls into one of the following categories:
1. The way the Internet works and gets you the Web pages you want to see
2. Possible, but easily avoidable given simple practices like using multiple passwords, multiple email addresses, not linking accounts all over the place, using SSL encryption for transactions, not giving out your credit card number to lots of sites, avoiding sketchy parts of the Internet, not clicking on links in spam emails, skeptically evaluating any emailed offers to get lots of money out of a country / inheritances from people you never heard of / etc.
3. Such an egregious violation of law and the First Amendment that lawyers would probably start a fight club on your lawn to see who gets to represent you and handle the eventual civil case.
4. Not possible or irrelevant.
Now, there are abuses out there - ICE seizures of domain names being one that's pretty worrisome. The stuff you're talking about? See the above four categories.
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steve10765
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i saw 2 kids at 11:30AM waiting for black ops 2 to come out, they were the only kids there and are probably still sitting there waiting for cod
why are online passes bad??? if you buy the game you have nothing to worry about right lar??? unless you buy uses games which is almost the same as pirating money wise, seeing as the publisher gets no money for used games sales
i am so ****ed, fing rockstar i bought your game, i dont even want it anymore... i am so ****ed, rockstar is stupid,
and lar you need to understand that pp isnt really justifying anything, he is saying what it is. i dont even feel like explaining it because you wont understand...
. i should just pirate the game. i dont even want to, i might aswell send this game back because rockstar eats... i will follow the rules of TF!
EDIT
DAMIT! in my other comments i hit quick reply, not quote reply! its funny because i was just talking about the following the rules!
why are online passes bad??? if you buy the game you have nothing to worry about right lar??? unless you buy uses games which is almost the same as pirating money wise, seeing as the publisher gets no money for used games sales
i am so ****ed, fing rockstar i bought your game, i dont even want it anymore... i am so ****ed, rockstar is stupid,
and lar you need to understand that pp isnt really justifying anything, he is saying what it is. i dont even feel like explaining it because you wont understand...
. i should just pirate the game. i dont even want to, i might aswell send this game back because rockstar eats... i will follow the rules of TF!
EDIT
DAMIT! in my other comments i hit quick reply, not quote reply! its funny because i was just talking about the following the rules!
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