Respect for Software Piracy (or lack thereof)

[kane_magus]

You know, I used to say that I at least somewhat respected the people who just flat out admit that their illegal downloading of games or other such things is definitely and clearly wrong but that they simply don't give the slightest crap about it and are going to keep doing it anyway, versus the people who equivocate about it, make rationalizations about it, pretend that it is somehow justified because they are "fighting the Big Corporations" or whatever, because at least the first set of people aren't deluding themselves about what they are doing the way that the second set are.

But no, no... as it turns out, I respect that first group of people just as little as I respect the second group. Huh. Well, how about that.

Comments

[hikarugenji.livejournal.com]

What do you think about piracy of games from old systems? I've always felt like if a company doesn't even make the game (or the system) anymore it's OK to "pirate" it but I know there are arguments even against that. I must say that I have few compunctions about playing SNES games on emulator.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Well, technically it's not any different from piracy of current games. However, if it's a really old game that is not available in any other way, aside maybe from paying several hundred dollars to some undeserving jackass on eBay, then I have no real problem with it. Or if it's a game like Mother 3 that was never and will never be released outside of Japan, but for which there is a fan translation available (but even then, I guess, one should try to at least get an official copy of the Japanese version, even if one has no direct use for it, just so one has an official, bought-and-paid-for copy of the game, but then, even I haven't done that one, so feel free to call me a hypocrite if you want).

That ends, however, if the game in question is available again on something like the Wii VC or XBLA or PSN or whatever (or something like Steam or GOG.com for old PC games). If people are still emulating (or torrenting) games like that, then my sympathy vanishes.

[hikarugenji.livejournal.com]

One of the big problems with piracy nowadays is that it offers a lot more than just avoiding paying money; that's what lured me into starting to do it somewhat. I mostly play import games, and I always got so frustrated that I would pay $80 (or more sometimes) for a pre-order game with expedited shipping, only to find that the pirates had already beaten the game before I even got my copy.

I eventually got so frustrated with that that I started pre-ordering the games and then also downloading them and playing them on a friend's modded console while I waited for the legit copy to arrive. From there it wasn't too hard for me to start testing out games that I wanted to try (after getting burned by a few $60-70 imports that were terrible, and falling into a huge rut of basically only playing Super Robot Wars and Tales games because they were "safe" buys).

I bought Ar Tonelico 2&3, Pokemon Soulsilver, the US version of Agarest War, and three Kingdom Hearts games as a direct result of being able to try them out via pirated copies -- I'm not really intending that as any ethical justification of piracy because I also pirated some games that I might have bought. One thing I do like about the 360 and PS3 is their ability to offer playable demos on the stores (and the lack of region locking meaning I can actually buy and play US games without having to buy a new console).

In some ways the DS and PSP are even worse from this standpoint -- with a DS R4 or the like, you can hold multiple games on your DS without having to carry them all around, and you can use homebrew. The PSP has the same thing, and also you can avoid UMD load times. My friend has a homebrew on his modded PSP that lets him hook up the PSP to his computer and play the games on his monitor with an external USB controller. I really do think the industry needs to do something about this because it's drawing people into piracy who wouldn't necessarily do it just to get free games. There's something wrong when piracy gets you a better experience than a legitimate purchase in ways that go beyond just "I didn't have to spend any money".

Anyway, that's my experience with my descent into piracy. I don't really think about the ethics of it too much, although I probably should. I do feel like people who pirate all (or almost all) of their games are depending on legit people to pay money to keep the industry going so that they can keep getting games for free.