General Discussions

to what you stole

There needs to be clarification to what piracy is.

Piracy is the unauthorized distribution or use of media or software in accordance of the EULA or license agreement that came with the product. It is not the same as theft. An analogy would be illegally printing money for yourself (you're not stealing the money, just making copies of it).

And of course I forgot to quote the damn post... bah. I'm referring to PeTTs0n's latest post here.

Apologies for singling out a rather small part of such a large (and well written and argued) post, but the part about denying people an experience because they can't afford it is an argument I strongly disagree with.

Some people can afford to fly around the world, working their way through or just visiting countless countries, but I can't afford it. I'm being denied an experience because I can't afford it, or some people go on holiday every year, while I've had one or two holidays in my entire life... that doesn't mean I'm going to go find some illegal way to get that experience.

Some people live in huge houses with a dozen rooms, three bathrooms and a kitchen the size of my entire house. I live in a 3 bedroom semi-detached. I'm quite happy with my home, because it's just that- my home, but I'm not gonna go break in to or take up squatters rights in a massive house because it's an experience I'm being deprived of.

I have a 57 inch flat screen TV downstairs (or rather, my Father does) which we got through savings. A lot of people still have tiny rear projection screen TV's because they can't afford anything better. They're not going to go steal a massive TV.

Being deprived of something because you can't afford it is a fundamental way of how the world works as it is now. It's not an excuse.

As for the definition of piracy/theft Neo referred to, everyone who downloads a game isn't specifically stealing a game from a developer/publisher, but they are essentially stealing the £30 mthey would have paid for the game from them.

A lot of figures recently have used "potential sales" to show their piracy figures of their games. It's a practice I don't agree with, but I don't entirely disagree with it either. Imagine if piracy didn't exist. To "try" a game (assuming here there wasn't a demo) you'd have to either buy the game (and whether or not you liked it is irrelevant, you'd still have paid for it), or do without. And quite frankly that's the way it's always been (refer to my analogy about TV's).

With pre-owned games sales too, and sales in general, going through the roof, there's not much excuse anymore. If a game is too expensive, just give it a few months and you'll be able to get it for £10 (or less) on one of the hundreds of online game stores. No one is forcing you to buy the game on day one at full price.

UPDATE:
Looks like the Megaupload situation has scared the pants off the other filehosts. Most of them are doing mass deletions of files, closing their affiliate programs, disabling the downloading of files other than those you yourself have uploaded, mass banning accounts sharing illegal files, etc.

I guess the fear of being shut down and slammed with god-like fines & jail has done the job the threat of SOPA/PIPA failed to do.

[Edited by Skyheart, 1/23/2012 8:43:34 AM]

from skyheart
UPDATE:
Looks like the Megaupload situation has scared the pants off the other filehosts. Most of them are doing mass deletions of files, closing their affiliate programs, disabling the downloading of files other than those you yourself have uploaded, mass banning accounts sharing illegal files, etc.

I guess the fear of being shut down and slammed with god-like fines & jail has done the job the threat of SOPA/PIPA failed to do.
----------------------------------------------------------------
well the fact that other filesharing sites are shedding files like a leper shows that they are infact used for illegal file sharing and they know it and the excuse of not being able to afford it so i stole it is a weak argument you wouldnt accept from a mugger so why should we accept it from anyone else

It's more than likely a result of a restructuring of how their site works and how files get filtered in a panic like reaction (whether by intensifying moderation teams or disabling sharing files).

As people know the creators of file sharing sites know people will use them for distributing illegal content its how they sell most of those premium accounts and they know it too.

Only time they remove files is when people complain about them, or companies do.

As said what happened to Megaupload has scared the rest to be more mindful of what is hosted.

Link

I know LJ isn't exactly a decent source for this info, but I can't find the original site I read it on and their own sources are at the bottom of the post.

As I mentioned in another post, file hosts do have a decent defence behind not clearing out their files of illegal stuff. Sure, they know people are going to use their servers to host illegal files, but there's not much they can do about them unless they're marked "This is an illegal file, delete me".

It's too easy to change the various values used for checking a file size by simply RARing a file and adding a txt with random characters in it, so simply deleting every file with the same CRC and/or filename isn't going to cut it.

You could say they could go through them manually, sure, but that'd take a tremendous amount of effort and manpower, and by the time they were done (and it would take a LONG time) there'd already be files replacing the ones deleted at the beginning of the process.

Hell, I have enough trouble deleting multiple copies of the same files on my own PC when I've downloaded one as a plain file, another in a RAR, and another in a different format.

It's obviously not a be-all and end-all argument and defence, but it's not as black and white as "they host illegal files, they know it and they just don't delete them." Just like some say piracy isn't as black and white as everyone states.

Of course, following MegaUploads' example and buying a yacht or two with the money you make from it... not so "shades of grey" anymore.

[Edited by Skyheart, 1/24/2012 4:04:00 PM]

there that sayin in 2012 its the end of the world but its end of the internet instead and they introduce a new bill sumthing about child porn, it pass they would allow them to check pples computer for it but u can say it might be a excuse to check ur computer for other stuff as well

Now that SOPA and PIPA have died down. The next thing we need to do is begin to, if not already, backup Europe as ACTA comes into play.

[Edited by Ladst3r, 1/24/2012 4:28:21 PM]