Why do pirates, pirate?

Great Debates
21

At the institution I attended, The class was mandated to purchase their own copy, or pay an exorbitant fee $350.00 IFIRC, to use one of their licensed PC’s. This didn’t guarantee you lab time, or immediate access to a machine. You had to share with every other monkey who signed up, regardless of class or assignment need.

When this policy was discussed on the first day of class, several students questioned the ethics of the university not listing this rather important bit of information in the catalogue; as the fee doubled the cost of the class, and those who bought the software essentially spent four times as much. About ten students dropped the class in protest. I made due with a pirate copy since I only had to take the damn thing to fulfill a requirement in my art track gen-ed.

22

These two

are interesting. That some companies don’t let you make backups of a product you own actually encourages piracy, since one would be hard pressed to condemn this practice as immoral (even if it does violate the license.) By being irrational in their licenses, companies are actually encouraging piracy.

The biggest one I’ve heard is that no one is harmed because, unlike the gas example, there is still the same amount of available product after the piracy. I know why this isn’t valid, but I think it does get used.

As for music, bootlegs (as opposed to pirated copies) are an interesting case. They seem a bit more moral, since the artist/company doesn’t make the music available. I have a policy of buying any officially released version of bootlegs I own as soon as possible. The improvement in quality is a plus.

23

Try this one–“The owner will not release the complete series on DVD, or release it at all. Since they’re not making money, I’m not hurting them getting it any way I can.”

Popular among many animation fans.

24

The primary reason I used to pirate games a lot, and still do occasionally is a variant of the “don’t want to subsidize game companies that shit on their customers”.

Back when I played a lot of games and didn’t make so much money (high school, college and a while afterward), I bought quite a few games that were great on the box, and had great potential, but due to shoddy programming, rushed schedules, or what have you, sucked balls. And I was out $50, with little or no recourse.

Better that I pirate a copy, find out it sucks, and then not buy it, rather than spending my scarce and hard-earned “fun” cash on it. Generally speaking, if it’s worth playing, I’d buy it so that I could play it online with others, or because I’m halfway honest.

(Quicksilver/Infogrames I’m looking at you- Master of Orion 3 sucked terribly. I’d have had more fun if I bought $50 worth of sandpaper & tabasco, then sanded my ballsack and dipped it in the tabasco.)

25

Oh HELL yes. A thousand times over!

Though not an Otaku myself, I had a friend in college who had a literal closet full of shelves with vhs fansubs and rare animated films. He spent several hundred dollars converting that collection to DVD. As of today he states that only about 40% of it has ever been released on DVD in any format or language. He made his money back by selling low cost copies to other Otaku. I think that this is a truly legitimate reason to pirate copies. Whether or not one should PROFIT off of this is a sticker wicket.

26

They forgot one.

I believe the systems and technology that allow piracy to exist are going to be the systems and technologies that keep the Internet free when/if governments decide to restrict access to information. I pirate in order to encourage the development of these technologies.

27

“Well, here we are with this big-ass boat, and I can’t find anyone who’ll pay me to give their stuff a ride across the ocean on it…”

28

Yes! Except for one stupid fucking Nickleback song, I don’t pirate. I also don’t buy music anymore. I bought another turntable for my old shit, and save youtube links for the newer. I got tired of buying an album, a cassette, and/or a CD, and an Mp3 of the same damn song.

Antipiracy measures have reduced their profits by my (very small) consumption amount. If they don’t want some of my money, then I’m okay with not giving them any of it.

Musicians have bills to pay, and I am all in favor of paying them to do their job, but damn . . . paying three times to be able to listen to one song in my

29

Were people who circulated MST3K tapes, as suggested by the show itself, pirates or not?

30

Right, that was sort of what I was getting at with the concept of purchasing it for my company. I did the work to get my company compliant with their licenses when they had tons of illicit software. I convinced them that having the techs tied up making things work when they weren’t paid for was inefficient when you could just buy the working software and be done with it. Nevermind that the MCSE’s among us could lose their cert for installing pirated software. So when it came time to upgrade Adobe products (I’d already been using pirated versions for years.) I justified it by saying, “Adobe has an extra $ 10,000 from me because I know their software because I’ve been using it illegally.”

31

The OP missed one reason. Some products are only available in pirate versions.

ETA: Which I see other people have already mentioned.

32

I work for a software company so it’s an issue I deal with pretty frequently. On the one hand, we make our livelihood on people who pay for software. On the other hand, I’ve seen people at our software company turn around and thoughtlessly pirate other companies’ software when the opportunity arose.

For the most part I think that it is a difficult question to answer - media and software generally are pirated because the person ‘feels like it’. On the other hand I think that there are many cases where piracy emerges due to a problem, and that companies are much better served by trying to make it easy to buy and difficult to pirate, rather than pain-in-the-ass to buy and presumably impossible (ha!) to pirate.

Example: I bought a game that included no CD key. I was not able to get a refund or CD key for it no matter where I turned. End result: really pissed off customer and a complete failure of the company. This should never happen.

On the other hand, working for a software company, the opposite extreme is not viable - some sort of software protection needs to occur. We added activation to our products in my tenure (e.g. greater protection against piracy). In the past, we just had a CD key for each package - but they were broadly released on the Internet. End result: huge increase in sales, especially for people buying multiple licenses.

We had many people pirate the software because:

  • They didn’t know that they were supposed to buy more licenses when using many machines.

  • They knew they were supposed to buy more licenses when using machines, but they didn’t care.

  • Real customers passed on their licenses to others and believed they were entitled to unlimited use because they weren’t actively prevented from doing so.

  • Companies had poor software inventory and kept installing the software because they were not stopped from doing so.

  • Pirating the software was incredibly easy - easier than purchasing, because of that whole pesky having-to-provide-info-and-payment deal.

  • They honestly didn’t even know they were pirating, because they were given or even sold the product from someone else who pirated it.

Over time, a big problem was that a lot of people forgot that they had pirated it to begin with! They had upgraded repeatedly a serial number that was gotten from the Internet, then were very peevy that all of a sudden, it didn’t work anymore with the new scheme. We had many people who demanded full licenses in these cases - even though we said plainly “this number was widely distributed on the Internet, you must provide proof that you bought this serial number originally”. This was a special pain in the ass when people actually bought the serial number.

Piracy has cost us not just sales of licenses, but wasted time in customer support and even technical support (as people try to masquerade as trial users or provide false or pirated serial numbers). We still have people coming to us complaining that their serial number doesn’t work - in one case, a serial number long since deactivated has had thousands of attempted activations, multiple people who bought it on eBay and complained to us, hundreds of distinct IPs attempting to use it… all of those would be not just free but net losses to the company if not for some kind of protection from piracy. And we’re a small company! A hundred licenses is a big deal to us.

All in all, I think the best standard is to attempt to provide some protection with as little possible intrusiveness on customers. Since our original launch, we’ve added several different activation changes – all to make the process go smoothly and simply for paid users. It’s not perfect but ultimately people will pirate your software unless you stop them. There’s no sense trying to defeat the dedicated pirates, but the vast majority are casual pirates who will buy if you give them a reason to.

33

Sometimes the copy protection measures on games actually damage your system. Game companies have absolutely no problem with bundling anti-piracy software that destroys programs and even hardware on my computer, wasting my time and money.

I stopped buying PC games entirely because of this, and I can guarantee that whatever small fraction of the loss reports game companies are looking at that I’m responsible for will be blamed on “piracy” even though I don’t pirate games. They’ll make even harsher measures to address the piracy, driving away even more customers, which makes them blame piracy even more, which makes them take even more extreme measures against piracy, repeating the cycle.

I’m so angry at pc game developers. I just want to put in a fucking game and play it, and not have to uninstall legitimate programs or buy a new cd-drive to do so. So, the only games I buy now are on the console. Spore can go fuck itself.

34

You software companies really need to spend more time in ARRRRRGHHH and D.

35

So presumably you target just those companies that you know engage in bad behaviour? I mean, you wouldn’t just shit on every games company because some engage in bad behaviour, right?

I’ve bought a number of games second hand with no problems. I don’t own any games that prevent me installing as many times as I like as long as I have the original media etc. I don’t believe your excuse. I think it is monstrously ironic that you would pay pirates who provide a “working product” when you define “working product” as one without the copyright protection that is introduced to avoid losing money to the pirates you praise.

I think you are making excuses. I think you are just demonizing the victim so you can dehumanize them and justify ripping them off. It’s a common mental tactic amongst criminals. Ask any criminologist. Yes, I know copyright infringement isn’t a crime. It’s just comparable.

36

Do what you want 'cuz a pirate is free.
Honestly though, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that computer users/programmers have always stolen other people’s code. The fact that code is compiled into binaries means that people can steal without being caught, so this mentality broke out, which later spread to other areas.

37

I’ve pirated a few times, so far they’ve boiled down to:

Look, I was a teenager and I couldn’t justify buying Finale in the eyes of my mom but my composition wasn’t compatible with finale notepad, it was one project. If (er… when, actually) I have to do it again I’ll try and buy the legitimate software, but it was pretty much my grade (I didn’t have time to write a new piece by the time I realized it wouldn’t work in notepad, oops) or a quick pirate.

The game wasn’t in production - As I’ve… um… ranted in quite a nonsensical and spectacular fashion before, despite being unsuccessful in that debate I buy for the game companies, not the game. Oftentimes an out of print game may not even BE on eBay or Amazon, sometimes I’ve pirated (i.e. Dungeon Keeper 2) because I couldn’t find it, even if I did it wouldn’t benefit Bullfrog (or EA, I guess) anyway on purchase and goddammit I wanted to play it.

Proper channels are convoluted, or don’t provide the version of the program I want - I tend to buy the product when the channels become easier, or they release the “uncut” version that was released everywhere else on the planet years ago. This usually comes in the form of imports, and most of the time Anime. I buy the box set or whatever when it comes out, or when they release it with the Japanese dub/cut (can’t they just do that the FIRST GODDAMN TIME!?) I also do it with a few games when I can’t read it and I need a hacked ROM. The only example of this so far is Mother 3, and I’d GLADLY purchase a US release if they ever get around to doing it.

I have the game and felt like playing it in another place/format - Partially mitigated with the advent of PSN, Xbox Arcade, Virtual Console etc, but I can bring my flash drive wherever, my Sega Genesis or next gen system not as much. Sometimes I play ROMs when I have nothing else to do at school or someone else’s place, I own the game so I don’t REALLY see it as pirating since I play it on the console when I get home but I can see how it may be construed as such.

I don’t pirate copies that use DRM devices for a simple reason.
Once upon a time I installed NWN 2 (I think), I didn’t know it had SecuROM, so I unknowingly installed that as well, it didn’t hurt my computer and I already had the software so I figured “what the hell.” Though I may stop out of protest someday I don’t plan on it as of now. I’m hoping for setting a little more… internal precedent (I’m going into the industry). Though this only applies to SecuROM, I still don’t buy other ones.

Also, would it kill them to print the CD-Key on the Disc as well? At least that way I don’t have to keep track of six things.

38

I live in China, and I buy software in stores all the time. Of course, when Adobe Photoshop costs 5 RMB (less than a dollar), you know it’s pirated, but there are essentially no other options- I don’t even know where to buy a legitimate copy. Not that I would pay for $600 software like Photoshop, but I would certainly buy things under, say, $50. I know that some companies let you buy their software and download it, but that’s a huge hassle for me, since my internet connection is pretty slow and my hard drive is pretty small, and I often don’t have the space to hold the installer, and install it as well. I like having the DVDs, as I install and uninstall stuff on a regular basis to conserve space.

I have bought lots of software, and I always pay shareware programmers whose applications I use regularly. I would feel a lot more guilty pirating their stuff, so I guess, as a pirater, I’m a mix of: Want Free Stuff, Convenience, Would Not Have Bought It Anyway (for expensive stuff), and Big Corporations Won’t Really Feel It.

39

I don’t pirate anymore, because I can afford what I want to buy, and I now can get good information on if a game is good or crap. I also have all but stopped playing most PC games. Why? Because of the destructive copy protection software. I don’t need things blowing my CD-ROM or making my computer crash if I right-click in Explorer. (Mass Effect does the latter.)
I don’t need rootkits on my computer for entertainment.

40

Yes i do only pirate games with crippling copy protection, no i do not punish honest developers. Like i said upthread i recently paid for sins of a solar empire, a game with zero copy protection that would take five minutes to download for free. I have no problem paying for games, i’ve spent thousands of dollars on video games in the last few years alone.

I assume they were old games?

The original media plus the tiny piece of paper with your cd key you mean. And once again i assume you mean older games.

It wasn’t an excuse, i was simply answering the question posed in the OP “why do pirates pirate”. Copy protection doesn’t stop pirates, never has, never will. There isn’t one single game ever that hasn’t been available for download on the internet within days of launching, sometimes even prior to being released. Copy protection does nothing but annoy legitimate users, cripple software to the point of unusability sometimes and destroy the resale market.

Or i might be trying to explain why they are losing me as a customer. I WANT to spend money on games, just dont sell me crippleware.