Piracy and Illegal Downloads

ive pirated like 1200+ songs, about 10 movies and the entire 2nd and 4th seasons of venture bros and entorague (sp?) respectively. i kinda stopped "pirating" (via p2p or torrents) as of late since i got the music2mp3 addon for firefox and a lot of movies i wanna watch my flatmate has because he pirates just about every movie that ever came out ever (he's a film major)
 
Pirate a bunch of games. They cost like $150 for DS games and $250 for Wii games around here (in local currency, of course, not dollars), which is fucking ridiculous. You guys probably find Wii Games for $60 to be somewhat expensive, but try paying $250 on them. =/
 
Yeah, the whole, "It doesn't support the developers" is an interesting topic. In theory, a company could make a game, put it in stores, but only sell one copy. This one copy could, hypothetically, transfer around to every person who wants to play it through sale or just as a gift. But this would be legal. Many people who spout the "don't pirate to support developers" are the same people who let me borrow games or buy used games themselves.

I'm not really sure on the whole music dealie, couldn't you buy a CD, put the music on your iTunes/whatever, and then sell it off? Just looking at www.half.com, it seems the prices are a bit cheaper for used albums than new ones for obscure bands, so I'm sure some people might buy used albums.
 
I used to pirate plenty of music; I still do for stuff that's difficult/impossible to obtain like game OSTs and that kind of thing. Lately though, if it's on iTunes I try to make it a point to buy it there before pirating. I've also never been one to pirate films, just because I want to work in the industry myself one day and can appreciate the kind of work that goes into a film on a more personal level.

I don't have any sort of moral high ground complex about it though, I've pirated certain software in the past and will likely continue to do so because fuck, it can be so expensive, especially on a student's budget.
 
I payed all my Wii-games legally, I think I somewhat have the right to just download my DS-games from internet (and all I download is occasionally Pokémon (still have to find a working Black or White ROM, stupid TTDS won't make it work) and some time ago Dragon Quest). I've been cutting on downloading music too, last year I think I downloaded like 7000 songs, and 100 max in the past three months.
 
I download music and games, but not in excess. The things I download are either things they don't sell in stores here(japanese games, various music). I feel slightly guilty, but the fact is that for the DS games and music I pirate, I probably wouldn't have bought them anyway. If I do go to the store for a game, it's for my other consoles and it's a two year dated used game. So no profit for them there either. I rarely buy new games.
 
In 2010 I downloaded like 100 GB worth of stuff, like music, games, TV shows, movies and even Windows 7. If I like something I try to make an effort to buy CDs and movies I like, but sometimes I just don't get a physical copy and just keep downloading stuff.
 

Myzozoa

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Generally speaking I dont feel bad about pirating music or tv. I will usually buy a the band's t-shirt if I find myself downloading a ridiculous amount of their music, most bands now a days dont expect to make money on their albums, they make money by touring and selling t-shirts. I will pay for games I guess, it never really occurred to me to try and download them illegally. I dont even really think of downloading tv as something morally questionable. If I am already purchasing cable what is the problem?

I think most artists have a feeling that its pretty ridiculous to charge $.99
per song.
 
I think most artists have a feeling that its pretty ridiculous to charge $.99
per song.
This.
One of my very close friends is signing a deal with Universal and I've asked him how he feels about people downloading his music for free. He has absolutely no problem with it. He feels that music is his art and that it should be free for people to use as they wish. He has a page on reverbnation where you can download his music for free. He sees it as flattering if someone takes the time to download his music.
 
I am so incredibly glad I started downloading music and ROMs from the internet. I've downloaded about 80 songs and 20 GBA ROMs. How the hell am I supposed to get Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi, Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken, Golden Sun, Golden Sun: The Lost Age, and Mother 3 for my GBA when those games came out over half a decade ago and the nearest Game Stop doesn't even have GBA games anymore, much less afford them, and also since Mother 3 and FE:FnT aren't even available in English without patches/translated versions. :[
 
I download whatever I fancy. I have a hard time justifying money spent on digital property and I've reached a point where I just don't care to have physical possessions if I don't need to. I will pay for services like Netflix, but paying money for a single download seems kind of absurd to me.
 
I DO NOT pirate. Althought i have a very close friend who use to pirate and now that he's out of Grad school hes going back and buying everything that hes pirated over the years. I think he said he had over 3TB of crap, Music, movies, games, shows including fansubed anime, etc..
 
idgaf because I am not indie so everything I like is mainstream which means the impact of my pirating is relatively low
 
I only feel bad about pirating games that I could easily buy new in stores. I don't think twice about pirating games for old systems (so fucking sick of buying used GameCube games only to find that they don't work) or Japan-only games that I'd need to pay a shitload extra to import and wouldn't really get anything out of it without an English patch anyway (such as Fire Emblem or the latest Pokemon game).

I don't really mind paying for my games, but I don't want to get screwed for it, you know?
 
Pretty much the only thing i pirate is music, but i pirate a lot of it. Part of the reason is because i prefer to download whole albums as opposed to single songs. However, if I really love an artist I try to go buy something by them, a physical copy if possible.
 

Kinneas

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I pirate music, games, films and pretty much anything I have a passing interest in. By pirating media, I've been able to open myself up to and experience a lot of different things that I probably never would have had the ability to without "stealing". I think that pirating has helped me to become a more cultured, educated and open-minded person who is more valuable to society than if I had sat at home, being poor and watching terrestrial television 14 hours a day. It's even helped me do better in college and school because I've had access to research material that I otherwise would not have been able to afford.

I don't feel the least bit guilty about bettering myself as a person rather than lining the pockets of a millionaire.
 
Wait, I just remembered.

I have a really good friend of mine, he's from Venezuela, and he brought a bunch of pirated movies with him. Even now he'll get pirated movies and we'll joke about it. Some of them aren't the best quality, but it's ok. At least you don't have to pay 20$ for a DVD, just 2$.
 
The day Limewire became illegal in California and my copy became unusable, I died a little inside. But then I discovered Mediafire...





:D
 

Bad Ass

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i pirate music. don't give two fucks about "stealing" from the label. paying for digital music is the biggest waste of money ever.

i don't download movies though, takes too much effort to dl high-quality films and then burn them. i have netflix and prefer to watch on a larger screen instead of the computer.
sums it up well for me. i've torrented 15 or so albums, 50 episodes of one piece, and all of death note. plus i've received a lot of shit, such as cowboy bebop, dexter, and battlestar galactica. but yeah g80 sums up my opinion
 

Nastyjungle

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I pirate music; like most of the other people in this thread, I don't really care to pay $.99 for an .mp3 file, and I don't really feel bad about stealing music when it's almost nothing short of highway robbery anyways.

I also pirate games, but nothing that is still being produced. Downloading anything from past systems like GBA and Playstation won't hurt the company any (not like they aren't making enough money anyways), so I don't care. I'll also occasionally get something that isn't in America yet, just so I can have a taste of it, like I did with B/W.

I tend to stay away from pirating movies and episodes of shows because like G80 said, it's pretty much an enormous amount of effort and just isn't worth it.
 

Dogfish44

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i pirate music. don't give two fucks about "stealing" from the label. paying for digital music is the biggest waste of money ever.

i don't download movies though, takes too much effort to dl high-quality films and then burn them. i have netflix and prefer to watch on a larger screen instead of the computer.
If you want a larger screen, have you tried connecting your Computer/Laptop to your TV itself? I know there's a cable for that.

I don't download much music illegally (Someone I know gets me top 40 albums every now and then, heh), but I will download games, and some programs WinZip, those little games which are great but overpriced [Like Diner dash - good but only worth it as free] and mIRC gets a regular dowload whenever I'm sick of waiting twice as long to use it.

Because my CD drive is screwed up, I now download a lot of older PC games I've paid for. I don't flinch over this - Parents did it before I did. Heck, my GRANDAD downloads films regularly. And streams TV...
 

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