This Months Haul~August Edition

[Dipstick]

I am not justifying shit. Frankly, if I am pirating anything and everything, why should you care? One could argue that people who buy these games are idiots when there is a way to obtain said games on the cheap. Piracy carries a positive expected value and expected utility for the pirate, and at the micro level what they do is absolutely irrevelant. To someone with no moral or ethical grounding, that is all the justification they need (and anything else would be sub-optimal).

The only point that I am making is that downloading an AVI of Battle Chicks With Dicks 5 is not the same thing as stealing a copy of said DVD from a local shop, and it is not even close. It's wrong, it hurts publishers and developers (although the actual damage is severely overstated), it's illegal. That is true. Both crimes carry different costs to society at large, and one is significantly more expensive than the other (you can figure out which).

I think where piracy matters more is with more niche games. If I was to publish a dating sim in the US with an expected userbase of 1,000; piracy would be a concern as I would think the set of people who would buy such a thing are much more techolongy-savvy than your average person who buys Madden 2006.

-K

[Razor Ramon]

I'll remember that when you're raping my girlfriend while killing my father and worshipping a giant golden penis.

[Diff-chan]

g0zen is a Scientologist? It would explain so much!

Anyway, yes, piracy-via-download is a crime. But its a victimless crime. It doesnt hurt anyone in the game industry or the game sales industry. Game sales go up every damn year and the companies are richer than ever. Piracy-via-download mostly consists of a bunch of people downloading games they would have never purchased anyway. Ruh Roh!

The fact it exists, though, is used by trade industries to influence laws and technology that crush our fair-use rights and by companies who put wrong-headed copy-protection schemes that hurt legitimate buyers. So fuck 'em.

[g0zen]

I'll remember that when you're raping my girlfriend while killing my father and worshipping a giant golden penis.

You have too many thetans.

[Razor Ramon]

This thread is about hauls, not our personal stance on piracy. Can we please get back to the "look at the shit I bought today -Morphix" thread back on track?

[Opaque]

Here's the thing, most people who are anti-piracy are under some false impression that if pirates didn't pirate something they would actually go out and buy it, which in most cases is not true. Wether or not I can download the Xenosaga animation doesn't change the fact that I would never in a million years buy it. So if I do go ahead and download it, no one is losing money because no studio would have got it in the first place.

Now if I steal a DVD from a store, someone loses money. The store is down 20 bucks towards their inventory and repeated offesess could possibly cost someone their job. The company that made and shipped the DVD is down all those costs as well.

There's the difference. In one case someone is a direct victim, in the other case no one loses anything but someone gains something; it's a victimless crime, just like diffx said.

[g0zen]

I got this today;

[Razor Ramon]

thetans.

what?

[morphix]

Licensing for other countries, sale outside of Japan... you've broken or partaken in the string of breaking laws.

Try again

Where is the law that states a game purchased in Japan has to be played in Japan? I want see the word for word law Mr. Expert

[Razor Ramon]

no one gives a fuck anymore, drop it.