Piracy poll

What's your stance on digital piracy, in general?

  • I have or currently download pirated music, movies, and/or games.

    Votes: 24 70.6%
  • I don't directly support piracy, but I see no harm in it.

    Votes: 2 5.9%
  • Either way, I don't really care.

    Votes: 5 14.7%
  • I'm against piracy, but I don't actively condemn it.

    Votes: 3 8.8%
  • I fully disagree with the practice of piracy, and legal action should be taken against pirates.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    34
It may be irrelevant to the information you're seeking, but I would have included a separate option from #1 for people who pirate media but then go on to purchase it if it is sufficient quality. I have a stack of CDs on my dresser that are unopened because I previously pirated them and then purchased them later because I enjoyed them so much. And on a related vein, I have several CDs that I've purchased after pirating other albums by the same artist.

It's not so much that I think there's nothing wrong with piracy as it is that there is so very much wrong with capitalism. Kid Rock is solely to blame for my piratical tendencies. After purchasing his album Devil Without A Cause and discovering that it was absolutely horrid, I vowed to never again purchase an album without having listened to it first.
 
I would have to say that it depends. After all, this is an emulation / rom hacking site. Personally, I will download anything under one or more of these three following circumstances:
1. The file can no longer be purchased in stores or otherwise (nes, snes roms etc.)
2. An album that I will listen to for a few weeks to determine weather or not it's worth buying.
3. Some kind of movie like "Battle Royale" that you just can't find anywhere, espesially with english sub titles.

On a completely unrelated topic, do you think that Megadeth's new song "Headcrusher" is any good? My drummer showed it to me and it's not bad, especially if you compare it to the last 5 or so albums...
 
It may be irrelevant to the information you're seeking, but I would have included a separate option from #1 for people who pirate media but then go on to purchase it if it is sufficient quality. I have a stack of CDs on my dresser that are unopened because I previously pirated them and then purchased them later because I enjoyed them so much. And on a related vein, I have several CDs that I've purchased after pirating other albums by the same artist.

It's not so much that I think there's nothing wrong with piracy as it is that there is so very much wrong with capitalism. Kid Rock is solely to blame for my piratical tendencies. After purchasing his album Devil Without A Cause and discovering that it was absolutely horrid, I vowed to never again purchase an album without having listened to it first.
Second this. I'm not buying an album without knowing if I like it first, and I have bought an album after first pirating it once already (though only once, given how little contemporary music I actually like).

PC games are another matter. I might buy the game if I like it, but obnoxious DRM and Linux don't mix, so I only play pirated versions because they have the advantage of actually working.
 
Anyone that doesn't answer "I have or currently download pirated music, movies, and/or games," will receive a ban for lying. ;p
 
I have some movies and music, but at the same time I don't like a lot of piracy. If it's something I truly like I'd rather support those who made it. It kills me when I go on certain web forums and listen to all these people who pirate every single game they can just because they can. Then they complain when their pirated games don't work. :p Very irritating. I pirate more for things I can't get or watch otherwise, like HD movies, or fan subs.
 
I have some movies and music, but at the same time I don't like a lot of piracy. If it's something I truly like I'd rather support those who made it. It kills me when I go on certain web forums and listen to all these people who pirate every single game they can just because they can. Then they complain when their pirated games don't work. :p Very irritating. I pirate more for things I can't get or watch otherwise, like HD movies, or fan subs.

I'm a lot like that. I have some mp3s (mostly single tracks from here or there, rather than whole albums), roms for which I don't own the cartridge (is it ok to say that here? =P ), and fansubs of anime series whose now-available licensed editions I haven't bought, but I don't like pirating on a enormous scale, and for software, if I don't want to pay for some hugely expensive program (e.g. Photoshop), I'll often try to to make do with freeware substitutes (e.g. GIMP). I too get annoyed by people who boast about pirating everything under the sun.

To tell the truth, I don't really feel right about even the piracy I do engage in, yet I don't anticipate deleting all my illegal stuff in a fit of guilt in the near future; I realize there's an inconsistency between my conscience and practice, even if I don't pirate as much as many people.I suppose recognizing the inconsistency makes me a willful wrongdoer rather than an inadvertant hypocrite. Is that worse? =P
 
Then they complain when their pirated games don't work. :p

I had the exact opposite problem. I bought Neverwinter Nights Silver and Platinum. I gave Platinum to a friends kid "4 CD version" and I kept the Silver "DVD Version" for myself.

Well I started playing again and the DVD for no reason developed 3 one inch long cracks from the inside hole outward. From just holding the disk I can tell Atari used a thinner probably cheaper DVD to record these on. Because of it I couldn't play or even get the DVD to show up in my player at all.

Now the fun part. For anyone who has played Neverwinter Nights knows the copy protection is so intense it sometimes won't install and sometimes required a fresh reboot just to play and you need the DVD in the player to play also. After paying $90 for both silver and platinum I found there was no pirated version out there since the copy protection is so intense they used.

As for Atari they put out a great game but in the documentation they put in a clause saying they only will accept returns from disk defects for 2 stinkin months even though they used crappy DVD's to record on.

In this case I felt totally justified in looking for a pirated replacement for the game since it was them being cheap with the disk that was needed to just playing it since if I didn't have to spin up the disk every single time those fractures would not have developed for maybe a couple more years instead of less than a year from purchase.
 
I'm just shameless when it comes to piracy. I say this just as I finished filling a 500GB drive that I have in my PS2. Got all the games off Rapidshare. Filled the 500GB USB drive I have connected to my Wii also and I'm currently pushing around 100 Xbox 360 games burned onto disc. 400GB external filled with movies and tv shows. Not much music though oddly. I usually just listen to whatever is streaming online.
 
I'm just shameless when it comes to piracy. I say this just as I finished filling a 500GB drive that I have in my PS2. Got all the games off Rapidshare. Filled the 500GB USB drive I have connected to my Wii also and I'm currently pushing around 100 Xbox 360 games burned onto disc. 400GB external filled with movies and tv shows. Not much music though oddly. I usually just listen to whatever is streaming online.

That's what I'm talking about. I won't judge, but with the Wii's USB Loader for example...am I really the only one who uses it only because it's convenient (well, and for improved load times in some titles)? :erm:
 
That's what I'm talking about. I won't judge, but with the Wii's USB Loader for example...am I really the only one who uses it only because it's convenient (well, and for improved load times in some titles)? :erm:

Probably not. I'm sure a lot of people that had large collections of Wii games turned to the USB loader for convenience. I personally only own the actual copy of one of the games on my drive which is Twilight Princess and the main purpose for buying was only to get the Twilight hack running.

Actually it's kind of getting old. For all the stuff I've downloaded over the years I'd never play all or even half of it in a lifetime. It's a waste really. Take the 360 games for instance. I said I'm pushing 100 games that I've downloaded, I only have played 3 in the last 6 months or so. Rock Band 2, which I actually own, Fallout 3 and Guitar Hero Metallica. My son plays stuff but even then it's mostly MLB 2K9 or Madden. So I'm actaully wasting my money in the long run just on the cost of discs.
 
Actually it's kind of getting old. For all the stuff I've downloaded over the years I'd never play all or even half of it in a lifetime.
That's what I always wonder about. Some people download hundreds of games, but they couldn't possibly be playing all of them.
 
That's what I always wonder about. Some people download hundreds of games, but they couldn't possibly be playing all of them.


Actually I downloaded a crapload of roms of Kazaa lite a few years back and I'ld say I've only played like maybe 50 out of 2000 or so and out of the 50 only played about 5 more than a few times before getting bored. I figured out a while back that it was the act of finding and obtaining the files in the first place was more fun than actually having it, like women a lot of times for an analogy.

I downloaded music also but found I didn't even like most of the stuff I got. I've deleted so much stuff over the past year or 2 that it's not even funny. Funny as this may seem I find the comic books I downloaded were the things I enjoyed the most.

Even before this thread was started I started deleting pron videos. Today I had the day off and deleted about 200 movies/clips I didn't watch and didn't even like and realized while doing it I was a digital packrat. I guess I'll end up deleting another 1000 or so vids and probably several hundred songs that are just taking up space at the moment. I'll probably keep the roms since they're not on my drive and only take up a DVD since I may want to play a game some day that I've never played before if I'm really bored since there is nothing to do in my town at all except working and drinking and drugs and work is the only one I seem to enjoy at this time in my life.
 
Well, I think of everything as shareware. Music, games, etc. I try 'em, and when I like them enough, I buy them in order to support the creator. If not, it get deleted from my computer.
 
That's what I always wonder about. Some people download hundreds of games, but they couldn't possibly be playing all of them.

I probably have over 10,000 retro ROMs, but I bet I've actually played a large chunk of them at least once or twice. Mostly, I have them for when I get bored and go searching for a new hacking project, or so that I already have them on hand when someone else releases a hack that sounds interesting.

Now, as for music... I have a habit of downloading entire discographies at a time, so I do have quite a bit of music that I've never listened to. I have several albums recommended by people that I haven't got around to listening to yet, I've got albums by bands who's other albums I liked that I haven't listened to yet and I've got random shit who's title's just sounded interesting but I don't know anything about it that I haven't listened to yet. But while back, I built a playlist in Songbird that contains all of the albums I haven't listened to yet, so I'm trying to clear at least one or two albums off of it each weekend.
 
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