Hi, I just wanted a rant about Piracy.
I think its stupid, all it does in the long run is cause problems for small game development companies due to decreased revenue. And what's more it means that any respectable site will not allow you to discuss backups. Backups are totally legal, if you own the original you have the right to make and run backups within the law (all of Europe and most of the US) but because of a few people who abuse this it is seen as illegal and is penalised thus punishing anyone who simply wants to legally protect there investment in a game. :@

ok rant over, anyone else want to add anything please feel free, i'd love to hear what you think.

Wow, I was expecting a lot more anger, lol.

I agree.

Dear Pirates:

Please go f*ck yourselves.

Love,

winmaster

I would have displayed more anger, however i didnt want to realy let rip incase i said anything against the rules. i get realy anoyed about this sort of stuff.

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" or something like that...

I've figured that, so long as they don't directly affect us, it's pointless to simply go around tossing insults like small children. While you may think that my view is narrow and I don't see the whole picture, it is quite the opposite. I'm not limiting myself to only accuse other people and curse them for owning and/or making use of illegal content. And for a brief moment, I'll contradict myself by asking you this question: do YOU own any illegal content?

With this question, I not limit myself to just backups of games that are still widely available on the market (Wii, PS3, 360), but to media in general. If you did not download a single song from sharing comunities like Limewire or Ares, or from random forums/fansites that host them shamelessly; do not have in your computer a movie you do not own a solid copy of, or ever watched partially or full online (this does not include previews); do not have a single TV show, anime, even documentary episode you have not purchased; have only freeware and license for any full version of software and/or computer games (not cracked); have NO roms whatsoever that you yourself have not dumped using the apropriate hardware (if you downloaded roms for cartridges you own, you most likely dumped the wrong version... just see how many rom versions are out there and you'll get an idea); have never purchased bootleg CDs, DVDs and/or BlueRay discs; have never downloaded and read e-books that weren't purposefully released for free download... then please. Go ahead and curse everyone else. You are the purest of the pure, and deserve praise.

Even still, I'd hardly believe you even if you said you hadn't. I have not met anyone who's ever used the internet who had NOT used it to download/view stuff that are protected by law and punishable by the miscellanous slew of penalties that exist in every country in the world. I'd strongly believe you weren't the exception.

I'd go on and on about this topic, but I'd doubt I'd get anywhere... my motto is "as long as 'insert group of people here' do not mess with me directly, I'm fine with them. The moment they start bugging the hell out of me... then I'll make 'em feel sorry for ever considering me prey for their mischief."
... or unless you had a fool-proof way to stop piracy, then don't let my comment stop you. People often go on about how it affects them and whatnot, but most of them do it in secrecy anyways, or don't do anything about it. While my take on how to cope with the piracy problem might seem immature, I'd think that if I'm not actively doing anything to stop it, this would be the next best thing.

Games are not getting any better anyways, if that's your concern... all the companies think about is having a product sell with the least losses as possible. Even if there weren't piracy, companies would still sell the same overpriced junk, and only a handful of gems would ever come out of it all in the end.

I'll end by just saying: be happy with your own well-doing (whatever the concept is called... but you get the idea).

I haven't mentioned this before, because I thought I made my points across quite clearly... but I've been feeling as of late that I might not be as clear as I thought I was being. My native tongue isn't english -__-;; ... and I hope that despite being so, I'm not misinterpreted.

Well this is my feel in the piracy, it all started with napster and haveing the internet and then haveing somebody uplaod a file. I will admit I did get alot of songs, at first but now that is way down, I might get a song or two once in a while. Then comes the whole fight on to stop that. Now my question is, what difference was it to have a tape deck that could record the radio? Was that the real start of piracy? I never resale my stuff its for my own enjoyment and use. I think those that are getting whole albums and trying to sell them should be the main ones to be knocked down. I will get a few songs from artist to see if I like them and if I do will go by there cd's.

But now in the real digital world its getting worse movies, are now being pirated, but if you watch real close they are taking in there phones, and cam corders, and recording the whole movies. And these things are even in HD, so they can be close to the real thing, so before its released for DVD its uploaded to the internet, those again need to be chased down and stopped. What about parts in the movie in the theater have a flash of warning at the bottom of the screen to keep those from recording it.

Games now are the newest form of piracy I have seen, it seems that somebody has found a way to copy a original and burn it to look like a original. Why couldn't the makers or those that make the disc the games are put on have some sort of anti piracy thing in it to keep from being able to be copied? I heard at one time, cd's had this feature to keep from having copies made. Or the game systems, have something in them to be able to read the disc and know that its a copy, no what what other software or modding is down, it still would reject the disc?

There has to be a way to stop piracy but am sure it can be a very expensive operation, and there for the cost would be overturned to us the consumers. I feel that those that are getting songs like one or two at a time is the same as making a tape off the radio. Any body getting full blown albums, DVD's, movies, games, and then resaleing them, should be punished somehow and stopped. But something else to think about is fake products, like Nike knockoffs, purse knock offs, isn't that like piracy? Making counterfeit things?

A main part of the issue is that companies are practically "asking" for people to pirate their stuff. Consider that a wii costs about as much as four games. At the cost of a wii game, I, for one, would not pay retail price unless I knew for a fact that I was really going to like the game. For this reason, I only own three games (not including Wii Sports), and I only have the third because it came with my Wii.

For all but the "best" wii games (I could count these on one hand, by the way), I would not pay more than $20. For practically all WW/VC games, I would not pay more than $5 (I own only one VC game, and only because I got it essentially for free). If the games were this cheap, I would have purchased at least three to four times as many wii games as I currently have, and a few WW/VC games. Therefore, the game companies would have made much more money from me, despite the lower income from each game sold. Also keep in mind that in some countries, games cost much more than they do in the United States. I know that if I lived in such a country, I would have either imported my wii and games, or, more likely, not bought them at all.

This is where piracy comes in. Many people absolutely will not (and often can not afford to) pay full price for all of the games that they want. Therefore, people find ways to pirate games. The game companies now get nothing for these games, rather than simply less money for each game sold (compared to my earlier suggestion of reducing game prices). After all, if games were cheaper, people would have much less incentive to pirate them.

Now there is another issue to consider. Just because someone pirates a game does not mean that they would have purchased said game if piracy was not an option. If I didn't believe that piracy was wrong, I would pirate many games, but I certainly will never pay the current prices for them. In fact, some pirates still purchase the games that they really like; possibly using piracy only as a means to try out the games before committing to a purchase (at one time, I fell into this group). In such cases, it is questionable how much (if any) damage is being done to the game companies. Furthermore, piracy can increase a game's popularity. Perhaps you play a friend's pirated game and like it enough that you want to own it yourself. Not believing in piracy, you go out and purchase the game.

Don't get me wrong. Piracy is wrong and it does hurt the game industry overall. It just doesn't hurt them as much as they would have you believe, for the reasons described above. However, it is still a significant problem. It also doesn't help that, money aside, it is easier to download and install a WAD than it is to purchase shop channel credit and download a WW/VC game from the shop channel. Furthermore, pirated Wii games are almost always played with a USB warez launcher these days. This can significantly reduce loading times and eliminate disc read errors (when I play SSBB from my original disc on my wii, it takes awhile to load, occasionally gives a disc read error, and always clicks very loudly, which is quite irritating). If you watch this video, you will see how much better SSBB runs through a USB warez launcher, and games likely run even better through the latest loaders. To make matters worse, such loaders also eliminate the hassle of changing game discs. Finally, money aside, it is often easier to pirate a game than it is to buy it, and the pirate receives the advantages of the USB warez launcher. Although one could copy their legally purchased games to a USB drive to obtain its convenience, the is even more effort.

In the end, piracy certainly is a major problem. Unfortunately, there is next to nothing we can do about it. On the bright side, the game industry could take steps to discourage piracy (reduce game prices, make USB loaders an official feature, sell games online and allow users to download them and run them from a USB drive, and such). Until the game industry does this, my attitude is as follows: piracy is a problem, and I won't personally contribute to it. I will not, however, go to any significant effort to convince others not to pirate. After all, if the game industry does not do their best to protect their stuff, there is no reason why anyone else should.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2010 07:55AM by jbc007.

Quote
Magil
You are the purest of the pure, and deserve praise.

Well, thats me I guess.
Never done any of those things.... >.<
But that doesn't really make the purest of the pure, just because I haven't pirated anything before.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2010 09:13PM by WaxyPumpkin72.

I wonder if workers at nintendo use pirated games on emulators....
Nahh, They all might easily obtain a copy of any game they want.

Question on piracy:
Is it illeagal to play fully modded and hacked games if I Own the copy to the very original?
Because, I have an old Super Mario World Cartridge and I obtained a hack for the game to play on Snex9xgx.
I'm just unsure if Hacking voids its "Just a Backup copy" title. If it is illegal, I will delete it right away. And, I know it
might be a stupid question, But I honestly am unsure.

@onilink422:

It is illegal to play any hacked game, even if you own the original cart. If you've read any game instruction booklet, it specifies on the back that while you may backup your game for your own personal purposes (I dunno today... most likely this reads different nowadays), it forbids explicitly the modification and/or reverse engineering of the game.

However, hacks are often overlooked by the actual companies, since most of these hacks pertain to games that have already sold more than their share (and having made profits), and are no longer available for actual sale anywhere (probably the only exception would be games that are sold on the Shop Channel... even still, I haven't seen Nintendo ask people to remove hacks for Super Mario World for example).

This is not entirely true... just look at the Crimson Echoes project. It was a complete overhaul to Chrono Trigger, and just a few days before releasing the patch, Square decided it was worth pooping their party and sending them a C&D letter.

Back to topic... it's illegal to hack games. You can use patches if you so desire, so long as you don't go around distributing the rom prepatched, or go around charging money for the patch.

Charging money for the patches/hacks isn't illegal.

Quote
Mathew_Wi
Charging money for the patches/hacks isn't illegal.

After analyzing it a bit... you might be right. But it's unethical to charge money for a modification of a game you did not even program from scratch to begin with. Even so, I have yet to stumble upon a ROM patch and/or hack that I require money to pay for... unless you were one of those unscrupolous people who take other people's patches, or create your own and sell them? Heh heh (not accusing you).