I'd like to keep this open and not start off with my own views, as I have a sort of double standard on this subject.

For those unfamiliar with these terms (These are by no means a concrete definition):

Piracy is, in this context, consuming or acquiring some sort of non-physical good without proper compensation to the producer(s) of said good. Examples of commonly pirated goods include books, albums, games, and software.

Intellectual Property occurs when individual(s) claim ownership of an original and non-obvious idea or process. Examples of intellectual property include the story of Harry Potter, Toribash, and the design of a flying kite.

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So, back to the main topic, what are you views on Piracy? How do those views relate to your thoughts on Intellectual Property? Do price ranges and whether or not you're dealing with "big business" affect your views or are they Black and White? If you are an artist or producer of some sort does this affect your views? Do you feel as if paying for the product increases the value of the product? Do you only feel obligated to pay if you wish to support the producers? And again, how do these opinions of yours relate to how you feel about the concept of intellectual property?

Don't answer (or read) every one of those questions, they're just suggestions.

Also, this goes without saying, but don't post any warez links or whatnot even though the topic is piracy.

Piracy - I don't believe there's anything wrong with sharing.
Intellectual property - I believe people should give credit where it's due and not claim to have made/conceived of something they didn't.

It's straight-forward to me.

yeah.. agreed towards that.. but when it turns into you not giving any credit towards the maker and acting like its yours that's when it draws the line. but also depending on what its towards...

For me, living in the pacific islands(where you cannot obtain the sort of music i like legally)
piracy is in a grey-zone. if you can get said intellectual property bye proper means, then you should. but if its not available then downloading it isn't that bad.
however where i live all of the movie rental shop just download movies then burn them onto discs, which is absolute bullshit. the producers/artist should not miss out on their pay simply because people are too lazy to go out and buy it.

Thellian pretty much nailed my own sentiments on this but I also think that the disruption of monetary and business functions are mainly the cause of all the fuss around this issue.

Production of content demands money and kickstarter drives really don't help people involved with content production in the long run. New ways to facilitate stability should be put in place imo because simply to give credit may not be enough.

I'm really torn about the whole idea of piracy, it's great that things that were once inaccessible are now in reach but I can't help but feel bad about it most of the time.

There's one golden rule I follow.
I usually pirate games. Most games aren't worth paying for.
However, when I really enjoy a great game like, say, Hotline Miami, which is truly a fantastic game, I will go back and just buy it.
My philosophy comes down to this: buy it if you want the developers to make more of it. It doesn't help if you're loving their game but giving nothing in return so that they go bankrupt and have to quit developing games.

Many of you seem to agree with Thellian's views. But, IP is about more than just giving credit to the creator. The creator(s) own the idea like they would own a table that they made. Working on that idea a bit more, both the creator/owner of an IP and the creator of a table will always get credit for their creations. Stealing "credit" is plagiarism which is a different subject altogether. However, since the creator of the table actually owns the physical table he/she will almost always get compensation if she/he decides to sell it. This is not the so much case for IPs though, since they're not bound to a physical object its much easier to steal or "pirate" them.

But another big difference with IPs is that when they're stolen the creator doesn't loose the IP like the creator of the table would lose his/her table if it was stolen. With that in mind you might feel like there's "nothing wrong with sharing." But at the same time how do you feel about not giving compensation to the original producers (Even though you feel as if they deserve credit for their creations)?

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Also Arglax that's a golden rule for many. But y'know I've talked to some friends about that view and there's a bit of skepticism regarding the pay after you play plan. A question one of my friends had was "Are you really going to pay for a game after you beat it?" I noticed that for Hotline Miami you said that you "will" go back and just buy it, not that you did. This makes me think (And I may be wrong here) that you bought the game before you pirated it. I know that at the very least this is what I do personally, that is I usually know beforehand if I'll want to purchase a game or not. And that I typically decide to pay before playing the game (That isn't to say I haven't bought crappy games).

But adding on the skepticism of paying after playing. When you get borrow a game from a friend do you buy it afterwards to support the devs? If not, there's not too much difference in this scenario and the one where your friend is someone holding a flag with scallywag emblem. But I digress, buying a game after playing it may just not make sense to me since I've never done so. If you do it yourself more power to you.

There is a difference: your friend already paid for that game. If you pirate something, nobody pays for anything.

The lost profits due to piracy is not possible to calculate, but its a fairly small number. that wouldn't bring down anyone that are serious about their game/movie/music. I would be more concerned about the anti-piracy acts than actual piracy. The group of people that pirates things are the group that is the biggest consumer of games/music/movies as well. And this also means that the game goes out to an even bigger audience that it would do without piracy.

Piracy seems like a bad excuse for lost profits, and to me rather than trying to stop piracy you should take it into calculation when you make a game/song/movie etc.

The real criminal is your grandma that doesn't buy any games at all, if everyone was like her the gaming industry would loose billions a year.

Maybe to big titles. To indie game developers they can be lethal.


I don't get the logic here.


What you're basically saying to small scale developers: "Hey... you should take into account that you're going to lose 20%-30% of your sales on piracy. But, you know. You should just calculate that in, make the game of less quality or something."
= Death of quality gaming.


So... the gaming industry is losing in sales because people who are not part of the target audience aren't buying? That's some great reasoning. This should be a part of every business model. "Your business is failing because people who aren't your target audience don't buy."