Ethics being mainly a synonym of empathy, I kind of fail to see how Egotism could be ethical. I tend to believe it too. Some people are just too generically opposing to every piracy discussion to be clear from suspicion. (and I'm not talking about TA specifically)
lol admittedly I have downloaded one illegal game... Trenches... although a day later I did buy the game. Not even sure why I decided to download it in the first place, because i'm very glad I did because it's such a good game, and I might not have bought it otherwise. This was my first and last illegal download
I have to tell you that any business model that doesn't account for some loss due to theft is bound to fail. Every industry has to account for it. Yes, theft is wrong but it happens anyway. This is as reliable as the sun rising. A mortgage loan default is also theft. Retail stores call it shrinkage. Bank robbery is not a new concept. It sucks, but if agents of these industries don't account for this their models will be wrong and they will go out of business. By the way, I hate pirates, like I hate murderers and rapists. My hating them will not make their behavior stop.
This is true, but I don't understand your point exactly. Of course you have to account for some loss, but for some reason people feel more free, or even justified, in stealing apps than they would by walking into a store and lifting something. Because of this, we're not seeing 2% shrinkage or 5% shrinkage, but truly ridiculous percentages. I'm not in any way saying that you are condoning this behavior, but even though this is an old behavior (stealing) the anonymity of this type of stealing must be looked at. I just think that people need to be honest with themselves. If you're stealing, admit that's what you're doing and decide if you're comfortable with that morally. Don't cloud things with spurious arguments. (Again, just to be clear, I mean the collective "you", not Scott )
Just to qualify myself, not only have I never pirated an iphone/ipod game, I haven't even jailbroken. However, on a purely philosophical point, that which can be COPIED cannot be STOLEN. If I steal a loaf of bread, you no longer have the bread. If I print out a copy of a document, the original document remains, thus, I have not stolen. This is where the legal slippery slope comes in. You are "possibly" "stealing" "potential" revenue, which cannot be proven. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but, to the guy above me who compared software pirates to murders and rapists: You're a ****ing idiot.
Again, and I understand your frustration, the goal of an accomplished bank robber is to remain anonymous. What we are really trying to do is discourage pirate behavior through the moral arguements made in threads like this. I just don't believe that will be effective. It may be better for indie developers to look at it realistically and decide if they can compete in such an environment. If answered honestly perhaps fewer of them will wind up living under bridges.
sizzlakalonji, this proves my point. Too many people have no understanding of the value of intellectual property. Can we realistically educate all these people. I'm not so sure. The only comparison I made between murderers, rapists, and pirates, was that I didn't like them. If that makes me an idiot in your view then you sir are a fool.
I was extremely surprised how many pirated copies of games get downloaded vs. paid copies. Its way more than I ever would have guessed especially when getting the paid copy is so easy, convenient and cheap (can't beat free though!). One thing that might help explain the numbers is this. So there are ~75 million devices; that is not the market for games. Only a subset of those devices ever get used for games (maybe 10%?). The percentage of the *game-playing* iDevices that are jailbroken would be interesting. I suspect it is pretty high. We keep getting studies with real numbers, reports from real devs with hard data and still these threads get filled with piracy apologizers minimizing the impact.
As long as you equal piracy with stealing, we can´t really discuss this. Even if we put it in Layman´s Terms, it doesn´t sound right. One who steals takes away the product, so another one can´t use, buy or sell it anymore. Piracy is copyright infringement. By downloading a product for free, someone else can just pay to use it aswell. Piracy might even increase sales. More often then not there is no lite version available. I´ve often downloaded a pirate copy to try out a game. I then deleted the pirate copy and bought the full version on the Appstore. Well, if the coder is too lazy to show me his product, then that´s the easiest way to check if it is worth my money. I´m not trying to justify it, but hey, qué será, será.
Straight up, you're a thief. I don't believe for a second that you've bought every game you've "tried out". It figures that a thief would try to justify (because that's EXACTLY what you're trying to do) their theft. I have no respect for your opinion, because you're a thief, therefore, biased.
Well kid, believe it or not, i do not care. I´ve got nothing to hide and my conscience is clean. I´m not a thief, i´ve never stolen anything in my life, and i don´t intend to. No i´m not trying to justify, i´m just pissed of you daring to call me a thief.
Well "kid" I doubt highly that I'm younger than you. You may have nothing to hide, but you're talking about stealing on a site that prohibits it, and saying your conscience is clean just proves that you're an individual with lacking character. I'm sure there are a lot of people who break the law who don't feel bad about it.
How about the next time I get pulled over for speeding I tell the cops I'm tblrsa and they come after you for the fine. According to your logic, this is perfectly ok, since you are still you, and I only used a version of you. It's a form of identity theft. Theft is theft.
By this logic, you sneak into movie theaters and pay for a ticket if you liked what you saw. That's not how it works, is it? We as entertainment providers give you, the customer, an opportunity to have an experience for a small fee. For some reason you feel entitled to get the experience for free and decide afterwards if it matches whatever criteria you have for a dollar's value. And for some reason 98% of pirates (from our own data) just happen to hold on to their dollars.
It is highly amusing to me the lengths people will go to in order to rationalize stealing whenever one of these threads pops up.
