quote:
Originally posted by unknown:
The reason stealing is considered morally wrong is because it damages in some way the person being stolen from.
You are half right. There are other reasons - see below.
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Originally posted by unknown:
If that person was not harmed and the person conducting the "theft" benefits the only effect is positive
Not true. Someone who owns a piece of property has the right to do with it as he sees fit. By usurping those rights for yourself, you commit a wrong against him by virtue of doing it at all.
Let's say you're on vacation. Your house is empty for a week. Suppose I were to pick the lock on your front door, without damaging it at all, and sneak into your house while you were away. Then suppose I vacuumed the whole house while I was in there. As I'm leaving, I tack a note on the bathroom mirror that reads "KILROY WAS HERE - P.S. Aren't you glad your locks suck?". I make sure to lock the door when I'm gone, so no one else can break in.
There. I haven't hurt you in any way; I caused no damage and I took nothing. The house was as secure as I left as when I arrived. In fact, I did a fair amount of cleaning while I was in there!
Is this OK? Well ... no. It's very much NOT okay, to the tune of "breaking and entering" - a felony in most places that will get you at least a few years should they catch you. You never told me I could do this - in fact most people would be absolutely terrified if this happened. Even though I ostensibly did no harm, I invaded your privacy when I opened the lock by the very nature of lock picking.
quote:
Originally posted by unknown:
for example Ill admit that I have in the past owned a number of unliscenced pieces of software listed on my computing course as required. I just plain couldnt have afforded them all short of liquidising everything I own these companies were never going to receive my money the only difference my "piracy" made was me being able to benefit from the course choices I wanted, while I have the money to do so I will by all liscenced copies of what I need but faced with the same situation again with the option of committing "victimless crime" I'd do it in a second.
For those people who would under no circumstance be realistically able to buy a piece of software surely their piracy is just as victimless.The suggestion that because the owner only wants paid customers no others are allowed without any other justification is well ... over-capitalist in my opinion, there are plenty of good reasons to justify an anti-internet piracy stance but using this alone seems greedy and spiteful to me...
[QUOTE]Originally posted by unknown:
[B]This is just ... well wrong, Ill admit I somewhat question the validity of pirating bgames as the industry is so fragile and I truly believe the games are priced at a level needed to insure the survival of th genre.
It is good that you acknowledge this. The market was very close to death when Peach Princess showed up. Exactly how close is a matter of some debate (confounded by the fact that some people who used to be here deliberately lied about it), but Peach Princess was one of the only companies still chugging along - most of the rest had died. If PeaPri had failed there is a very real chance that G-collections wouldn't have opened up - and instead of being on a growth path we'd be on a road to nowhere.
quote:
Originally posted by unknown:
However in general software is priced disproporionately to the making costs at such a degree software of similar production costs can range from £20 to £3000 (sorry im at a loss for £to$ conversion but you get the picture)
I am sorry. You are very much mistaken. I am a professional software developer and I moonlight in the gaming industry - I happen to know for a fact that you are mistaken.
You aren't really talking about commercial software like OSes and whatnot - and I'm not connected to that kind of thing anyway, but to internal software dev for a large conglomerate. So I'll stick to the gaming industry.
Games take teams of about 100 people to make now. They have for years. Even ten years ago a group of a dozen or less could make a decent game. Not anymore. Now you need far more than just a dozen people merely for art.
Now, the average development cycle for a game is one year. Some more, some less - we'll average it out. A year is a good ballpark. Also average salaries in the gaming business are going to be about $40K. At LEAST. Probably quite a bit more. So in reality this is an underestimation.
So. 40K/year * 1 year * 100 people = 4 million dollars.
Yes - 4. Million. Dollars. This is what it is going to cost you just to pay your employees, which is not the only expense. There are all kinds of other things you have to pay for. Marketing, for instance, isn't cheap.
Neither are the license fees. Every console since the NES has operated according to the following scheme: you sell the hardware at a loss, because if you charged what it was worth no one will be able to afford it, you'll have crappy sales, and everyone will go make games for some other system. So how do you make money? You charge a royalty on every game sold. Typically it's $5-$10. Then - the recent games are DVD-ROM titles. There are fees you have to pay to the DVD consortium in order to press DVDs. That's like $1.
Then there are the costs entailed by creating a physical product and shipping it around the globe and whatnot. I don't know much about those so I'll take a blind stab in the dark and say, from creating a disc to stocking it in a store, it costs you $5 a game.
So, the costs for making a physical copy are around $12-$15. Now you have to factor in that the retailer has to make a profit - we'll round that to $20. Now, you have to make something like $4-$5 million dollars off of your game. ($4 mil for the creators, plus some for everyone else involved and marketing.)
If the game does well it'll sell something like 100K copies. To make back your $4 million dollars, you need to make $40 per unit sold. Now, $20 of the purchase price is taken up in costs. So the game has to retail for around $60.
...now, that isn't quite right because I'm not using real numbers. I just estimated. But that's the way it is. Games cost a LOT of money to make nowadays. They're like Hollywood blockbuster films now, and they didn't used to be. The consequence of this is that the price has to go up. But they're NOT gouging.
quote:
Originally posted by unknown:
the reason for this is because the software market is full of monopolies the most obvious example being chairman bill himself another less complicated one is with high end graphics packages there are certain features in certain specilaist packages which are just required to some people particularly students doing computer graphics courses who can barely afford their text books are expected to use the likes of maya which can encroach upon the £8k mark.
This is your best point. It is in fact true that education has been officially recognized as an interest that justified carving out exceptions to copyright laws. See the provisions related to public libraries.
However. This is not a very good point, for a few reasons.
One - any university worth going to is going to have a computer lab that will have the programs installed you need. It is not necessary for you to have them installed on your own machine.
Two - every developer out there knows about this and will make accomodations. You can get amazingly large discounts of like 90% or more on software for learning purposes. The software has some additional licensing restrictions (designed to prevent people from, say, buying the student's version and deploying it across their company) but generally works well enough for you to get your stuff done. After all - if the program is too expensive for new users to be able to try it out, then no one will ever buy it at all. Companies don't like it when that happens.
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Originally posted by unknown:
the warez community allows people to have all the software,videos,games,you name it they need (and yes you can need videos and games) without plunging into hopeless debt
As for claiming you can NEED videos and games - I'm sorry, but here is my only response:
You should stop lying to yourself.
And also - so what? Mugging lets people get all the necessities they need without plunging into hopeless debt. What does that have to do with anything? You cannot justify anything simply by saying "well it's good for ME" - you have to consider more broadly its effects IN GENERAL.
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Originally posted by unknown:
moat people taking advantage of such systems still regularly put the money they can afford into software, gaming, videos, etc
How do you know? Did you ask people? If you did, how many? Besides which, even people who NEVER do will lie when you ask them this question because they are embarrased.
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Originally posted by unknown:
Please proceed to tear that apart .. thankyou
As you wish ;)