Makes perfect sense. I don’t pirate either. But, for a long time, I didn’t realize that many multi-player game licenses allow you to spawn clients. Just wanted to pass that along.
However, this brings up another interesting question:
What about ROM images and code files for programs that haven’t been available commercially for years? There are several web sites that have C64 Emulators and vast libraries of cartridge and disk files. Is that piracy or just nostalgia?
I’d call it nostalgia. In fact, most of the video game companies turn a blind eye to emulation. If they aren’t upset about it, I don’t see why we should be.
Let me state right off that I’m currently enrolled in the Computer Science department at RPI, and hope to develop commercial software some day.
That said, I admit to having pirated software. However, other than Windows2000, which I fully intend to pay for, once I get some money (honest!(besides, I have a legal, unused NT4 license, so they’ve made some money off of me)), I don’t use software illegally more than once or twice without buying it. I simply am NOT going to purchase a game and find out that it’s crap. I download it, try it, and then either delete it or purchase it. I can honestly say that right now I have no pirated games on my HD, and I have at least 7 games that I pirated and then purchased.
So is it right? Certainly not. Do I do it? To a point. But I feel that what I do is (more or less) ethical. I’m not going to stop. And, when it all comes down to it, I wouldn’t have a problem with someone doing what I do to MY software somewhere down the line.
Flymaster,
You posted ‘…I admit to having pirated software. However…I don’t use software illegally more than once or twice without buying it. I simply am NOT going to purchase a game and find out that it’s crap. I download it, try it, and then either delete it or purchase it.’
Can’t you get trial game samples off the Net?
Further ‘So is it right? Certainly not. Do I do it? To a point. But I feel that what I do is (more or less) ethical.’
Interesting. It’s not right, but it is (more or less) ethical? Oh, behave! 
And ‘I’m not going to stop. And, when it all comes down to it, I wouldn’t have a problem with someone doing what I do to MY software somewhere down the line.’
Well, let’s hope that you don’t write an adventure game which someone steals, plays thru (just once), then deletes.
I should add that this is only intended as mild criticism.
Maybe I’m a lone voice against software piracy.
But I’m sure you would never consider shoplifting a game, trying it out and then either buying it or returning it. So why is piracy OK?
yosemitebabe
Here is an extract from one of the software licences at my work
Here are extracts from another
Most licences I have seen are very similar to this, and appear quite clear. You buy the right to use the software, but no more than that. You do not have title to the software, so you cannot give the right to use the software to someone else.
Surely the legal position is clear.
The question of whether software costs too much, or whether you should have the right to freely distribute someone else’s work is a different question from the simple one of ; is this legal?
Let’s have some honesty about this issue.
Pirate or don’t pirate, but don’t pretend that you are justified in doing so, or that you think your particular circumstances allow for it.
RussellM
Russel, those EULAs that you quote from have been found to be mostly unenforcable. Unfortunately, I do not have a specific cite. But intellectual property is a recurring controversial hot topic on the geek news site Slashdot.org, and this has been brought up over and over again.
Unfortunately, the recent UCITA bill will probably change this and take even more rights away from people.
If you really want to “fight piracy” use Free* alternatives such as Linux or bsd. Free software is usually of a higher quality anyway, though the paradigm does take some getting used to.
*as in Speech AND Beer.
Nerd, I agree with what you say.
Until software producers can develop a foolproof, easy and cheap method of preventing unauthorised use, piracy will be (almost) impossible to prevent. Given that all previous foolproof methods have been overcome, we can assume that we will always have software piracy.
What I was asking for though, was a measure of honesty about people’s dishonesty. Almost all of us use or have used or will in the future use software that we have not paid for. Admit it or hide it as you choose, but don’t try to justify it with ‘victimless crime’ arguments.
I have no idea what this means. What is the UCITA bill, and does it remove the right to own what you develop, or does it remove the right to steal whatever you want?
RussellM
Not at all. Although I can’t honestly claim I’ve never pirated anything, I can honestly say I work hard to stay legal now and don’t use software I haven’t paid for.
I was listening to the Kim Kommando radio show last week and a woman called in asking how to copy MS Word off of her hard drive so she could put it back after she re-formatted. Kim suggested she use her original disc and the woman said a friend had installed it and had moved away. From the sound of it, she didn’t even realized that what she had done was wrong in any sense. She simply had no clue about intellectual property.
And, BTW, according to the news yesterday, my state is one of the worst as far as pirated business software goes. Wanna guess where the BSA will turn its attention next?
It seems that the bill gives excessive rights to software producers and strips consumers of the right of redress. You can start reading about it at:
Sometimes you buy a new computer that has an operating system on it that you already own. EULA allows you to get your money back. But have fun trying to get it back from the people you bought the computer from.
I have no problems with what flymaster does - one of the shops near me states that if you keep your receipt, you can return the game/other software within ten days if it doesn’t work with your system/works badly or you just don’t like it. If you take it back, they refund the money (in cash rather than store vouchers). They get happy customers who will buy from them again, knowing that even if the reviews are wrong because that company just bought a herd of advertising from the magazine & the editor won’t let anything bad go out, they can still take it back & have enough money to buy a decent game afterwards. So the good software companies get rewarded and the bad ones don’t get to rip everyone off with total crap issued too early because someone else’s is going to come out that month…
Originally posted by glee
I can, and then I can see what the developer wants me to see, or I can play the FULL game, and decide for myself. I refuse to be ripped off by a company, and I refuse to pay for crap. If it’s worth my money, I’ll buy it. If it isn’t, I only use it that once to test.
Ok, I’m not going to argue that what I said made sense. Make that is it legal, no, but is it kinda ethical? To me, yes it is.
Ok. I DO NOT do this. I play perhaps one or two levels of a game. One or two quarters of a football game, maybe an entire game. Whatever it takes for me to get the gist of what I think of the game. I look at what options are available (ALL the options, btw, not just what is included in the demo. Many games I’ll buy because of the level editor, something you can never test in a demo product. If the editor sucks, I want to know about it.)
If you want to argue that there is no difference, fine. We’ll agree to disagree. But I stand by my statement that I have no problem with someone doing this with my software.
Simple. Nobody is losing a product that they paid for here. If I were to shoplift it, I would be robbing the store of a potential sale for the time that I had the product. If stores gave out loaner software that I could either return or buy, however, I would CERTAINLY do this.
I have paid for every piece of software I own. I do this to make up for ‘morally casual’ people who steal software.
One of the main reasons why games cost so much is piracy. Developers have to take into account the fact that if a game is popular, about half (sometimes more) of the people who get the game will not be paying for it. Games are very expensive to produce, some have teams of dozens of well-paid programmers working on them for years. If they can’t make back their money, they will have to cut back on their expenses on the next one - the result? More and more cheaply produced or unfinished games on the market.
To give you an idea how big of an impact piracy has on game sales, look at F-15 Strike Eagle and Dungeon Master. Both of these games were immensely popular in the mid-80s. F-15 sold something like 500,000 copies, which was really exceptional at the time. Dungeon Master sold three times as many copies. Why?
Dungeon Master used new compression algorithms on their disks that made them virtually impossible to copy. It was several months before a crack was made, and until then if you wanted Dungeon Master, you paid for it.
Look at the sales figures for Myst. Not that great a game, only appealed to a certain market, yet it set new records, for a long time it was the best selling PC game, ever. Why? At the time, CD burners were not available to the general public, and due to the vast (at the time bigger than most people’s hard drives) size of the game, you needed the CD to play.
Look at Starcraft. It STILL occasionally makes it into the top ten games, sales-wise. Yes, you can pirate it - but you can’t play it against other people on battle.net without the CD key. Same thing with Diablo and Diablo 2.
One of the reasons there are so many MMORPGs ala Everquest and Asheron’s Call coming out soon is they are immune to software piracy - you have to pay a small monthly fee to play the game on the maker’s servers. Everquest sold a LOT of copies when it was new.
I believe that developers will find a way to cut down on software piracy, and we will probably see a new renaissance in gaming as it becomes much more profitable. Until then, I will pay for all my games and deride people who don’t.
fierra,
you posted ‘…one of the shops near me states that if you keep your receipt, you can return the game/other software within ten days if it doesn’t work with your system/works badly or you just don’t like it. If you take it back, they refund the money (in cash rather than store vouchers). They get happy customers who will buy from them again, knowing that even if the reviews are wrong because that company just bought a herd of advertising from the magazine & the editor won’t let anything bad go out, they can still take it back & have enough money to buy a decent game afterwards. So the good software companies get rewarded and the bad ones don’t get to rip everyone off with total crap issued too early because someone else’s is going to come out that month…’.
This is excellent marketing by the shop, and I’m sure both flymaster and I will use this sort of store a lot.
I posted to flymaster ‘But I’m sure you would never consider shoplifting a game, trying it out and then either buying it or returning it. So why is piracy OK?’
flymaster replied ‘Simple. Nobody is losing a product that they paid for here.’
Sorry, I don’t understand that sentence!
Further ‘If I were to shoplift it, I would be robbing the store of a potential sale for the time that I had the product.’
Only if it were the last one in stock.
Badtz Maru,
Superb post!
I’m tempted to make
‘I believe that developers will find a way to cut down on software piracy, and we will probably see a new renaissance in gaming as it becomes much more profitable. Until then, I will pay for all my games and deride people who don’t.’
my new signature 
“I have paid for every piece of software I own. I do this to make up for ‘morally casual’ people who
steal software.”
Okay, you can cast some stones 
What if you bought software but the software maker was a software pirate themselves? Reminds me of Microsoft getting sued by Apple. One look at Windows & one can easily see that its a mirror image of the Apple desktop.
handy,
I can cast stones too (!) - but I don’t like violence.
I agree that Microsoft do sail close to the line. On the other hand, they’re doing it in public, and can thus be sued.
Software piracy is stealthy (almost as if they’re ashamed of it ).
I don’t think I’d call Windows a mirror image of Apple (though the resemblance is obvious).
Macs only have one Mouse button (dunno why I mention that).
[hijack]
I pulled this little tidbit from my vast array of completely useless information. IIRC, Apple did sue Microsoft a long time ago because when the orginal Windows came out it was the same as the then current Apple OS. So Microsft said, if you sue us we will no longer make products for Apple. Now understand that at that time, Apple really need Word, Excel, et al because they were trying to get their product in as many homes/business’s as possible. Also understand that Microsoft’s ultimadum (sp) was actually a bluff because at the time they were making a lot of money off of their Mac versions and the Mac platform was really taking off so there was a potential for a lot of future revenue. But the then current CEO, I think his name started with an “A”, fell for the bluff and agreed to not sue Microsft in exchange for Mac versions of Microsft’s products. So Windows became a reality. That was the beginning of the end for Apple, IMO.
By the way, I got this information from a collection of books I have about Apple.
[/hijack]
-N
Yeah, I “pirate” all the time. Thank god for cable modems… (Why spend 150 or so for WinMe when you can spend an hour downloading it?) Though, I only pirate Mircosoft and other big name companys, the little guys are worth every cent. The way I look at it, Mircosoft is not going to miss the money too much and cause I would not buy the software anyways I might as well.