Your thoughts on Piracy?

[Prozac]

How did VCR and cassettes destroyed the TV and radio?

Hahaha, you crack me up man. xD
Look this up, it explains.

 

[sub]

Is it even explainable why steam doesnt make the same prices to every countries???

Publishers set the price of their games. If a game isn't the same price in every country, blame them for being greedy

 

[Prozac]

Publishers set the price of their games. If a game isn't the same price in every country, blame them for being greedy

taxes too

 

[Sicron]

Prices these days for games and movies and the like are getting ridiculous here in the Netherlands. In the olden days, I paid 60 gulden for a game. Nowadays, I pay 69 euro's for a game, mind you, 1 euro = 2.20 gulden. So I essentialy pay 151 gulden these days, 2.5 times I paid for a game 8 years ago. The damn euro inflated the prices so much, you can hardly keep buying new games. I can import a game from Britain or America, and I only pay an equivalent of 30 or so euro's. Taxes are getting out of control over here. That's not to say I don't buy games, I have plenty of bought games around here, but only the ones I really think are worth the money. But I try to get most of my games abroad as much as possible.

And I also pirate software such as 3dsMax and Photoshop, they are just far to expensive for a mere student to buy. It's not that I don't want to support the creators, it's more or less that I can't support them with these prices. If a game can be 30 euro's in America, and only a small portion of that goes to the actual creator, where does the extra 30 euro's here in the Netherlands go to? Yes...to our government. And I am not exactly keen on supporting them with it.

 

[sub]

Saw this on a comment on Reddit today








Industry Talk - A one-act play by CaspianX2

.

Music CD: Hey, guys, that illegal downloading sure does suck, doesn't it?

DVD: Oh, yeah.

Videogame: Absolutely.

CD: Yeah, my business has been really down lately because of those pirating bastards. I'm sure you guys are having the same problem, right?

DVD: Um...

VG: Well...

CD: Wait, your business hasn't gone down every year for the past decade?

DVD: Um... not as such...

VG: Actually, I'm doing pretty good, all things considering.

CD: But the economy...

DVD: Oh, yeah, ouch.

VG: Yeah, tough year.

CD: But your sales...?

DVD: Pretty damn good.

VG: Don't mean to brag, but... well, through the roof. With all due respect to you gents, my numbers are probably higher than the two of you combined right now.

DVD: Show-off...

CD: Really? What's your secret? Do you guys have some sort of anti-piracy technology I don't?

DVD: Well, my files are a bit bigger, I guess...

VG: And my developers try stuff like proprietary formats, registration codes... but usually I can't get too fancy with that stuff or people start to boycott. Man, you should've seen that time I tried Starforce. It was nasty.

CD: But the different formats and codes... they work, right?

VG: Eh. Anyone who really wants to pirate a game can do it without too much hassle. Hell, PC games often get pirated before they're even released!

DVD: Oh, that happens to me too! You guys heard about that **** with Wolverine, right?

VG: Oh, yeah, tough break.

CD: Oh yeah. The filmmakers didn't make a dime off of that one, right?

DVD: Oh, no. They totally made bank, and it'll be another big payday when it hits home video, for sure. Hell, some people have even argued that the leak made for great pre-release publicity!

CD: Wait, wait, wait... so you guys have piracy, too...

VG: In all fairness, probably not quite as bad as yours.

CD: Yeah, but... if more or less anyone who wants to get a free game or movie can do it, how do you turn a profit? I mean, why would anyone buy you guys when they could just download you?

DVD: Well, come on, not everyone can pirate stuff on the internet. I mean, most people are pretty clueless when it comes to that stuff.

VG: As much as I hate it, most of the people downloading probably wouldn't be buying the stuff anyway.

CD: So what am I doing wrong? Why have my sales gone to ****?

DVD: Hmm... well, what are you selling?

CD: What? Oh, maybe an hour of mu-

DVD: Oh, come on, you don't need to lie to us. We know better. Be honest now.

CD: Er... the license to listen to about an hour of music.

VG: For...?

CD: I dunno... $10-15?

DVD: Hmm... that sounds a bit steep.

CD: What? That's totally worth it!

DVD: Well, I'm $10-20 for usually about 2-4 hours. So that's kinda' like twice the value, isn't it?

VG: I'm $20-60 for anywhere from usually eight hours to fifty or so.

CD: Fifty hours!?

VG: Well, with some games. Of course, there are others where you could spend hundreds... even thousands of hours on them. And of course there's the multiplayer stuff, which could last a person forever.

CD: Well, a person could listen to the same twelve songs over and over again, too.

DVD: All twelve songs?

CD: Well... actually... usually about half of them are crap... and only one or two of them are really good.

iTunes: Hey, guys. Sorry I'm late. What's up? Are we talking about value? Because man, people just can't seem to get enough of me! Picking and choosing the songs they like for a buck or two apiece... it's like there was this whole market just waiting for someone to-

CD: YOU!!!!!!!!!!!

iTunes: Huh?

CD: You *******! You're killing me!

VG: I thought you said pirates were killing you.

CD: They both are!

DVD: Um... maybe people just don't think you're worth what you're charging. Have you ever considered lowering your prices?

CD: Hey, in the last twenty years I've gone down a whole five dollars! Isn't that enough?

DVD: Umm...

CD: Oh, you shut up! What about you, Mr. $60 videogame? How do you justify staying so expensive?

VG: Increased cost of development. Have your development costs increased exponentially over the last decade?

CD: Well... it's... SHUT UP!

iTunes: Music companies have done a lot of haggling over the cost of royalties, so it's tough for me to maintain my prices.

CD: AS WELL THEY SHOULD! You're only hurting their CD sales!

iTunes: But I cut out about fifty middlemen between them and the retail stores, and a lot of the overhead costs as well!

CD: Well, you know what? Screw you guys and your "value". I deserve to be making as much money as I want and that's that! And I don't care what you say, the reason I'm not selling so well lately is obvious - it's the damn internet and its damn pirates and its damn iTunes... well, I have an answer for that. Call my lawyer, it's time to sue, sue, sue! I'll sue everyone! I'll sue YouTube! I'll sue my customers! I'll sue so much I'll be just as famous for my lawyers as I am for my music!

iTunes: You really expect everyone to start buying from you again once you do everything possible to make them hate you?

CD: Why not? It's not like they'll have anyone else to go to for their entertainment!

DVD, VG, & iTunes: .....

Fin.

 

[Skyrider]

Prices these days for games and movies and the like are getting ridiculous here in the Netherlands. In the olden days, I paid 60 gulden for a game. Nowadays, I pay 69 euro's for a game, mind you, 1 euro = 2.20 gulden. So I essentialy pay 151 gulden these days, 2.5 times I paid for a game 8 years ago. The damn euro inflated the prices so much, you can hardly keep buying new games.

You do forget that you also get more money when working (a job).

 

[Prozac]

You do forget that you also get more money when working at a job.

And then you woke up.






Living in the Netherlands became more expensive since the euro was introduced.

 

[Sicron]

You do forget that you also get more money when working (a job).

Yes I work, and no, I don't earn 2.5 times more than I did a couple of years ago. Fact is, everything got twice as expensive, but we earn less.

 

[Mkilbride]

You do forget that you also get more money when working (a job).

That comment man. I dunno, but holy crap, that seemed so immature right there. Not what I'd expect of a mod at all.

So if he works, it's ok that it costs him so much money?

It's the same thing in America right now. Prices are going up, wages are staying the same. It's why the Economy is also crapping out on us.

 

[sub]

Doesn't seem immature or insulting at all to me. I think you're looking too much into the comment, Sky is one of the nicest people you could hope to meet

 

[Mkilbride]

How is that Sub? He already said he works, and his wage hasn't increased, but the prices of games are 2.5x what they used to be for him.

Skyrider just insulted him and said he didn't have a job and that it was his own kind of fault deal, when it clearly wasn't.

 

[Skyrider]

No no no, I don't mean he doesn't have a job. I meant that since there is the Euro, you also gain more money when working in general.

 

[Mkilbride]

Well you phrased it pretty damn badly there man.

How would you feel if you woke up tomorrow and you made the same, but everything was 2.5x more expensive? Wouldn't you be pissed?

 

[Skyrider]

Well you phrased it pretty damn badly there man.

How would you feel if you woke up tomorrow and you made the same, but everything was 2.5x more expensive? Wouldn't you be pissed?

Since I'm Dutch as well, I know and feel pretty much the same.

Also, when you look in to my reply, you'll see I don't really mean him about not having a job:

You do forget that you also get more money when working (a job).

I added (a job) after it so people understand what i meant with "working".

 

[Snowm@n]

No no no, I don't mean he doesn't has a job. I meant that since there is the Euro, you also gain more money when working in general.

LOL :laff: , you are dutch allright

 

[Epedemic_Optikz]

I'll give my input on the 3 most pirated things.

Games: 90% of games out there aren't worth the 50-60$. If I can beat the game within 3 days, it's a pirate for me especially if there is no fun multiplayer aspect. Seriously I can't merit a 60$ purchase only to be done with the game in 3 days. If the game deserves the 60$, i'll buy it. Some games that merit its purchase would be GTA4, SF4, Demon's Souls, FFX, Oblivion, etc.

Music: I personally believe these people make too much money than they should so I could care less about them. Besides, the music quality of most genres have been going down drastically, the last thing I pirated before Eminem-Relapse I don't even remember but why should they make more money than a doctor? You think Soulja Boy deserves all the money he has?

Movies: Probably the one I feel the most bad for but the fact is, it is hard to find some of the movies you want. I may want to see a really old movie but the stores by me may not have it and that's gas money, so I might as well just pirate it. As for the newer movies, I actually go to the theater to watch them but I never buy the movie food, I sneak in some Doritos.

Another contributing factor to piracy: wealth. I'm not financially satisfied as I bet some people since I'm in college and I barely have money for anything so piracy is tempting as the op said since it is so easy to get away with and easy to do.

 

[Gon]

I don't think pirating software or games is all that bad. I know that the majority of people download anime from torrents, and that's considered pirating even if it's not licensed outside of Japan.

So, yeah... not much can be done about it really. I only see it as a problem if people start to make copies of their pirated goods and sell them.

Majority of the animes outside of Japan are popular because they were pirated. It helps somewhat, but then again hurts somewhat. If everyone pirates 3D Max or Photoshop, it makes that popular and some people might want to buy it since it's good.

As for movies, I don't pirate movies. I still go to the movie theaters to watch them. Even if they're charging me $5 bucks for a small popcorn and coke (F***ing rip off).

 

[sub]

If you want to know if something is moral or not, ask yourself one question - What would the world be like if everyone did it?

If everyone committed murder, the human race would end. If everyone drove drunk, mass chaos would ensure. Similarly, if everyone pirated games, the gaming industry would collapse, millions of people would lose their jobs and no more games would be created.

 

[Chakra-X]

Yes I work, and no, I don't earn 2.5 times more than I did a couple of years ago. Fact is, everything got twice as expensive, but we earn less.

That seems rather...Backwards. How did they justify that?

I do not pirate movies. A **** load of work goes in to them, even if you did not like it. Nothing expensive for renting a DVD. Movie ticket prices....I could see how that could drive people to pirate, but I hate having to deal with the lowered quality. I also get this feeling that it is easier to get caught stealing movies?

Games I do not pirate because I usually hear of hassles trying to make it work, and I do not play a lot of PC games (plus I have a Mac). However, I have gotten some PSP games because 1) they are not in the US, 2) I was never actually going to buy them because I would not use it often, so I figured it was like using gamefly. and 3)PSX games I own I wanted to play on my PSP.

Software is the biggie. Paying $1000 to make some designs/effects in photoshop, illustrate scenes in Illustrator, and create amateur cartoons in flash is harsh. For the larger companies, this makes sense, but this does not work for a student. Yeah they have student discounts, but you can't use your creations for money and they still cost a hefty amount. And it may not be the person's profession or field of study. There is also the saying that companies benefit from this because when kids come to love these programs early on because they are so available, they end up buying them when they get professional (since it is less safe to pirate at that level).

The music industry is appalling. I love iTunes because I can pick and choose songs for only 99 cents. It takes work to make a song and I feel they deserve it. If I were to download a song without paying, it would be one for a one time use in an animation or a silly song that I actually would not pay money to listen to. Still, downloading albums upon albums illegally just seems to happen out of convenience for people. Maybe it's because I am not that in to music, but I bet $50 in iTunes credits would last me years.



*Devil's Advocate*- Who are we to decide how much people deserve from doing what?

 

[Nuttzy]

i buy stuff i want to own, i pirate stuff i like, just not enough to pay for. (or cant afford)

in my case, the authors/creators are not losing a penny, because if i didnt care enough about the product enough to warrant me downloading it, i wouldnt have paid for it anyways, regardless how accessible it was.