Touch Arcaders Against Piracy

Looks like that's not an option anymore

What a relief

 

and there was much exaltation from the tweener crowd.

wtg admins! get those nasty pirates outta here!!!

 

Hip hip hooray! Hodapp, or whoever banned him, you are my hero

 

s0mah, what would you say to me? From your tone in this thread it seems that you support piracy. I just helped a friend ship a game that he worked hard on for 6 months. In one day we watched 4000 pirates steal his game from just one download site that we found (there are probably more for all I know) and fill the leaderboard with scores (so they *are* playing it, not just looking and deciding to buy or not).

Arguing that no pirates would ever buy the games they steal is just nonsense. First, it still does not justify stealing; second, they are enjoying the games enough that its obvious some would buy the games if they didn't steal them. Especially when these games are so cheap you can pay for them with the change in your couch!

What possible motivation do you people have for arguing against this group? I just don't get it. Do you *really* think piracy is ok?

 

Salem just called, they'd like their witch hunt back.

ps.

What app are you making reference to?

 

You can find out the name of the app for yourself by reading the threads on this subject. If I tell you you'll either say the app sucks and question my numbers or claim I'm doing it for publicity.

Where is the witch hunt? All we're saying is that people should not pirate.

 

This research is flawed from the start. You can't ask someone who is used to getting something for free if they would pay for it if they had to. Most people would say no out principle, not because they honestly won't.

I'm not going to try and make any claims of percents or fake statistics, but it's only logical some of these people would end up buying the game, even if it is just one. Even if it's only one it's lost money from the people who worked for it.

But asking someone if they would pay for something they get for free and expecting an honest answer is pretty silly.

 

Only read the first few pages because 30 is a lot to read, but I just want to chime in with thoughts on the "how many people who pirated the game would have bought it if they couldn't get it free?" debate.

The simple answer to that question is that it doesn't matter. If all of them would have paid or if none of them would have paid, it doesn't matter.

The examples of stealing from a shop are flawed, because taking a physical object prevents others from acquiring said object legitimately, which with software and digital media is not the case. A much better example would be this: you are walking back from the shops one day when you notice a way to sneak into the local concert venue. You watch this entrance closely next time a gig is on, and you are absolutely certain that you will not get caught by using it. So you decide that in future, you'll just sneak into every gig that happens there. You never had any intention of going to any of these concerts before, so it's not really stealing, right? And no-one else is any worse off because you broke into the venue, right? Wrong. Wrong wrong WRONG.

I don't know how much more simply I can put it than A CRIME IS A CRIME NOT BECAUSE SOMEONE SUFFERS FROM IT, BUT BECAUSE IT IS AGAINST THE LAW. Now, you might not agree with the law, for example I happen to believe the laws in my country regarding marijuana use are ridiculous and inappropriate, but THAT DOES NOT GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO JUST DO WHAT YOU CHOOSE.

Piracy is wrong. It is theft. It is entirely irrelevant if the developer even notices that their product has been pirated. You don't go around killing homeless people, do you? 90% of the time they won't be missed, you aren't likely to be depriving the world of any great intellect or talent, so what's the harm? I know it's an extreme example, but some people only understand things when they are made utterly preposterous.

TL;DR version: Piracy is wrong, regardless of whether you would have paid if you couldn't pirate.

EDIT: Just read back through at some of SpungoMcGee's posts, and I have to say I really wish I'd found this thread before he got banned. Anyone who looks at one study by one developer about one game and calls it gospel really hasn't got a leg to stand on. I can point you at a recent poll who's numbers suggest that if the British general election were held two weeks ago, the BNP would now be the opposition party. Does that mean all the blacks, asians, muslims and jews should flee the UK immediately? Ignorance dressed up in flowery language is ignorance nonetheless.

 

I'd rather sooner support others' arguments than your morale absolutism about "a law is a law and you shall not break it". That's one view I do not abide by, because it's all relative. I'd sooner agree that people who could buy an iPod touch probably aren't starving people who can't afford to buy apps.

So according to your view, people in Cuba should follow the govt's rationing laws, and suffer on two pieces of meat a month (something like that), couple of fruits per two weeks or month (can't remember, presentation done years ago), little spices (pepper, salt), no cell phones, no computers (before a year ago), just starve simply because it's the law (not religious).

Women in a Afghanistan should also be starved if she refuses her husband intercourse, every 4 days.

And, age of consent in Japan is apparently 13 to 18 from state (equivalent) to state, so you should go along if she has sex at 13.

Really? You would say all those laws are good to follow should one be in that country and that they'd have no right to do otherwise?

Are the laws of the world all right or all wrong at the same time?

The rest of your post is sensible. I just can't in all good "intellect" (little that I have) follow that part.

 

From a completely detached and objective standpoint (the only one that can be used to form a coherent argument), I would say that in all the examples you gave, regardless of how I might personally feel, people living under those laws should abide by them. Western ethics are defined by prevalent moral codes - most generally the judaio-christian codes that form the basis for the majority of democratic constitutions. In other countries, where said religions are not so thoroughly entrenched in the national psyche, other ethical conventions dictate their behaviour. No-one who is not born of and raised under a regime has any right to comment on the moralistic direction of any of their laws and practices.

It is important to make a distinction between right/wrong and good/bad in my argument. If you live in a country, you implicitly agree to follow that country's laws. Breaking those laws is wrong. However, it may be that categorically the only thing that came from breaking said law was good. Conversely, following the law can lead to bad things happening, even though what you did was right. I appreciate that my use of language here is rather confusing, but it's hard to make the distinction using commonly accepted definitions of right and wrong.

Basically, what I am saying is that right and wrong are not a moral or ethical distinction. They are not quantifiable - something is either right or it is wrong. Good and bad, on the other hand, are much more subjective and so more easily applied to ethical and moral issues. People all too often get that distinction mixed up, which leads to confusions like this.

 

narf

 

people cant allways change stores because sometimes they have an unspendable balance

 

I have to speak up here......................

First off i haven't pirated nor do i intend to pirate any iphone app/game in the near future but thats not because im morally against it tho

it seems you guys are all misunderstanding the point of piracy or rather what it represents and instead of researching what piracy is all about you would rather argue semantics and just to make sure we are all on the same page here when i say piracy i mean non commercial filesharing piracy

to me its a philosophical movement of information wanting to be free, it wants to be free there is no doubt about that and not free as in entirely priceless free, its more like free as in open free, open to the world to share, exchange modify, improve personalize and experience with no limitations financial, platform specific, discrimination, censorship or otherwise.

at its core its not about getting something for nothing a la free nor is it about boycotting the establishment although it mostly manifests from the majority of filesharers for those two reasons, but philosophically if you do the research piracy is more like an emergent behavior of the internets which connects various somewhat open and somewhat closed societies from around the world and this behavior is a reflection of our own desire as individuals connected to each other to be more united more open share more have more freedoms and of course more connectedness to each other and its not that those values haven't been with us all along and out of no where these values just all of a sudden manifests themselves now that there is a somewhat open platform and something to share no these desires these values have always been with us its just that for the first time in history there is a worldwide communications platform that for the most part is neutral and this platform empowers us to express these inherent desires and values on a level never seen before


from an economic point of view piracy is nothing more then a loss of profit or a loss of the opportunity of profit it is a loss of control a loss of distribution

from most content creators point of view one who understands digital media and an informed consumers point of view piracy is the result of an evolution of technology that empowers consumers to control a medium of distribution so widespread, so accessible by millions of people around the world, not to mention easy to use, affordable and super efficient unlike anything ever before to share their thoughts, their feelings to share information and media because that is what we do as FREE humans we share things.

back in the day on physical media sharing used to require lending and borrowing from two individuals now that technology has evolved to digital media sharing is nothing more then a donation of bandwidth between two individuals and the result of an effort from one of those individuals or another individual to make their digital property available to the world and this is of course all thanks to the ongoing drive of humans to improve things and build on top of the efforts of individuals that came before them as is all things but now that that technology has evolved sharing content equates to nothing more then a search and a couple of clicks or a creation of a torrent file and an upload of that file to a medium where people can search and find that file easily however the sharing of digital media always requires a donation of bandwidth the more people sharing and thus donating bandwidth the more faster the sharing will spread

even back in the day people have always shared books, they would share records, a-tracks, tapes, cassettes, and people still share books/CD/DVD and so on to this day.....

so what makes you think that people will not be driven to share digital media which is inherently easier to share by design because sharing digital media between two individuals doesn't require one individual to lend property and therefore not have that property in their possession anymore with digital media the property can be infinitely copied so now instead of being limited to sharing property between two individuals at a time, one individual with a little effort can start a network effect out of the desire to want to share their experiences and essentially be able to share media to literally ever person on the planet who has access to the internet and a computer and is interested in that media and not to mention the more people who share this media the faster it is for each individual to download it and therefore the faster the media spreads

so if you want to look at piracy in a different perspective try looking at it like this:

piracy that is the NON COMMERCIAL sharing of media has a direct conflict of interests between the people and the design of the economy

the people just want to create media, consume media without limitations, they want to share this media that they enjoyed so much with their family and friends, some people even want to change it, personalize it by expressing themselves and have a desire to share that to the world

the economy by design wants to sell media its wants to make a profit from that media and it is driven by profit as all things in the monetary system let me rephrase that you will not see a company manufacture a product or offer a service EVER unless someone somewhere is making a TON of money from it there are exceptions like non profit and philanthropy but theres are not companies and require participation, donations and effort from the people so by design there is no ethics in business theres only profit and what must be done in order to make a profit nothing more nothing less its not about what would benefit the people 100% of the time although those interests do sometimes align between companies and consumers but its not to make the world a better place its only a pursuit of profit but dig into it deeper and you will find that there are private unregulated entities who control the printing, the value and distribution of currency and therefore they control the economy and therefore they control the markets and just because some companies have enough money they have on a lot occasions influenced the government to officially sanction them as an oligopoly which means the government will regulate or unregulated (depending on what will benefit the companies the most) to keep the market or the playing field set at a cool 2-3 competitors which is counter productive and shouldn't happen sure you can assume thats for the best interest of the people or a half ass attempt to manage world resources but still with no competition the companies will have no interest in improving a product or service which is what would happen if competition was prevalent in the market the only thing the companies focus on is how do we cut costs and maximize profit that makes you kinda wonder whats the point? and if you look hard enough you will always find evidence that the point is profit and/or the subservience of the people in the process

bottom line piracy comes down to this conflict of interest

society and the people want information to be free and open
companies are driven by profit and sometimes competition free and open just don't apply
the government wants more power/control
the private entities controlling currency want even more power/control

so the people are outnumbered 3 to 1 on this and that of course isn't assuming that there is synergy between companies, government and the private entities that control the currency

if i were you i would focus less on how to stop or outlaw piracy or if its morally just or unjust and focus more on how to reinvigorate the relevancy of the Constitution or rather get the people to actually control the government like they are suppose to in a republic, abolish the private entities that control the currency or at least audit them and give control to the government (that is essential) and last but certainly not least unless you want it to happen all over again at least consider some viable alternatives to the monetary system such as a resource based economy and implement it ASAP


sorry to write a book but yea thats my opinion on piracy

and thats not even looking at how the entertainment business as a whole operates before and during piracy and that it is as of now only owned by 6 companies and how the business of entertainment in general effects society and the nature of art and culture in general

thats a whole other story you should definitely research before you try to stand up or against piracy