Wii Warm Up: Piracy

I used to, once upon a time. When Napster had first started up, my friends and I scoured for any music we could think of ("look what I get when I type in the word 'monkey!'")

I had downloaded overly expensive software before, but that was just because I needed it for a class and I didn't feel like doubling my books/class material budget.

I've tried downloading movies and games before, but the time it took wasn't worth it for me. Plus, I really didn't _need_ whatever it was enough to wait that long for it to download. Not to mention, the quality was usually crap.

Pirating in general wouldnt be so bad if they stopped charging a months worth of rent for an office suite *ahem* or paying 10-15 bucks and to find out that theres only 1 song that u like out of 13.

Everybody wants something for nothing and pirating is the way to achieve that.

I have downloaded music and 1 game. The game was Warcraft 2 for the PSX. The only reason I downloaded it was to play it on my PSP. And all the music I download is just openings and closings of anime. Nintendo has been too good to me to deserve pirates.

I mainly do it to get my favourite gameboy classic/color games onto the DS. I already own almost all of the ones I emulate. I bought the e-reader for crying out loud, there's not much worry about my money not going to Nintendo.

I have never pirated a game. I doubt I ever will, I would never open my console to add a chip make a mod. I'm too much of a spaz to risk bricking it. I used to pirate music pre itunes. Now the .99 for the song I want is easier than searching for it. The main thing I pirate is tv shows.

I support piracy. It's called sharing, and it's fundamentally a good thing. They teach you that in preschool. If you can create unlimited copies of information, the best thing for society is to get that information to as many people as possible. It seems trivial in terms of entertainment, but what about copyrighted drugs or new irrigation methods that third-world countries can’t afford? And if you consider that entertainment is only entertainment because of the current system- that it could be real art in a better system, it becomes less trivial to encourage its distribution. And importantly, the same communication technologies that make piracy easy also make forming non-corporate groups to create art and software easy. It’s just a little pinko/anti-American to talk this way because America doesn’t really create anything other than non-tangible information-goods anymore.

But do you really think we need billionaires in suits telling us what the next big hit song should be, rather than letting real artists create art for art's sake? The technology exists for anyone to create music and share it with the world. You don’t need a company to publish it anymore. And there'd be no more bad musicians at the tops of the charts if there weren't crack teams of marketers selling us the crap- all paid for by people adhering to old music distribution methods and not sharing.

Is Bill Gates better at writing quality software than the open source community, or is he just today's most ruthless businessman who resells the same terrible, buggy crap to an ignorant population that doesn't even know about the other options he's marginalized? Would your grandmother have any clue if she were using Firefox rather than Explorer or Ubuntu rather than Vista? She might notice it crashed less, but she wouldn’t know why. Don't give him more money to spread more lies and buy more influence.

There are other incentives to create besides money. I argue that those incentives- recognition, philanthropy, expression- produce better work too. You can see it in video games as well. The good games are created for the game. The crap is created for money, which you can see in any movie tie-ins or absurdly repetitive sequels. Money gets you the crap you see on television. The latter gets you true art from artists, true knowledge from scientists, true information from reporters, and a better society.

What I love is the modchippers go on and on about homebrew with the PS2. The problem is...the PS2 is crap hardware for homebrew. It's cool for about a week...and then you realize it's worthless. I thought playing off the hard drive would be more convenient. It isn't. Same with the Gamecube.

There's tons of games that are hard or near impossible to find, or you don't have the console anymore....*looks over at a dozen SNES carts*. However, being a programmer, I understand that purchased software supports the workers' careers. If it's realistic, I'll gladly pay now that I can afford it. $20 for something like a screen saver is a ripoff though.

I've always been a ninja of piracy, though I prefer to call myself a ninja of copyright infringement. This has been going on with me (and my country) since the Atari 2600 days...I do it with absolutely no moral qualms, and I still buy stuff I REALLY enjoy. In many cases, copyright infringement has contributed to me buying stuff I wouldn't have ever dreamed of buying (music and comics, mostly). I rarely download books (fiction, nonfiction, technical, etc.), though...maybe just to take a look at a few random pages when they're not available at Amazon LookInside or Google Print. I spend most of my disposable income in actually buying books.

But back to software...one of the reasons that drew me towards the Wii, besides innovation, was the fact that I could easily mod it. So I bought it, and chipped it with WiiFree. It works flawlessly, and I'm very happy with it, playing lots of crap games that I wouldn't buy anyway, like Spider-Man 3, and imports like Furu Furu Park. I still bought Zelda and WarioWare, but I almost always download before I buy.

i think it is okay to pirate stuff that you would never pay money for(at least the price they are asking). also most of the people that are losing money when you pirate things instead of buy them are freakin loaded

@6 i think a lot of people that use Linux share the same philosophy as you, when someone is about money there product is usually crap

Piracy is good, I don't consider it wrong. Cause belive it or not, most people buy stuff that they like to support the creators. I do that... Also, I buy games because it's not the same with piracy material (as said before) and usually copied games drops alot of things (like online gameplay) to be able to be "pirated".

Software Piracy was invented in 1842 by a man named Edward Q. Tumbler in an attempt to combat the greedy tactics of the Indrustrial Salt Mining Co.

Mr. Tumbler has passed on, but his legacy lives on in all of us. Goodluck and God Bless!

I steal because I get away with it. Simple as that. It used to be accepted practice but now its becoming more and more frowned upon.

Everyone puts up excuses as to why they are morally allowed to steal software (Its too expensive, I bought a game that sucked once, its just the same as sharing a game disc with my neighbor) Thats all bullshit and you know it. Stealing is illegal no matter what your reason and the only one that gets away with it is The Sandman in Spiderman 3 (DAMNIT THAT MOVIE SUCKED). So if you didn't try to kill Spidey recently then you don't get a free pass.

You are a Pirate! ^_^

http://gprime.net/flash.php/youareapirate

MAFIAA can suck it.

I love pirates, in the Pirates > Ninjas arguments, but really hate pirating, as I said previously in the Philippines thread.

If Nintendo would be selling access to legally downloaded Wii games for like 5$ per game per month, or a play-all-you-want subscription that lets you download and play any of all the Wii games for a flat monthly fee of 15$, then I would think it to be normal, and people would less likely spend time installing modchips and download the games ilegally. Nintendo can keep selling the games for 50$ in reseller stores, though for people who have broadband and can buy an external USB hard disk drive, let those people pay for access to all games legally through a subscription 15$ monthly subscription. No one has the money to buy all Wii games for 50$ each, and instead of relying on Blockbusters as a renting store, Nintendo could rent the games directly to customers using the broadband Internet connections. This would also let Nintendo and the relatively small developpers be able to frequently also release updates for games, also encouraging people to have this subscription.

People wouldn't pirate games if they weren't so damned expensive. Same goes for music, movies, books, and any other media that can be converted into bits.

I am a pirate because I can't afford to buy games, music and movies. Some people can afford it. I can't. Until I get a job that pays me well or if they make games cheap enough for me, I'll continue to pirate.

The gap between the rich and the poor is growing exponentially. The wider the gap, the greater the pirate population.

No shame here. There's no way someone is going to deprive me of games simply because I can't afford to buy them.

I only pirate when it's convenient enough. When I can't find a torrent, I usually buy the DVD. As for games, I've never modded a console. I _may_ mod my XBOX for some XBMP action; but I don't even have a DVD burner. Of course, I usually don't buy games at the really-high price tag of $50; which is why I only own two Wii games (Sports and Play). I do have some VC games on my Wii, though.

GlitchCog, I'm guessing you use Linux too ;)

I used to pirate everything I played, unless I couldn't (I didn't have my PS2 or GC modded). I pirate a lot less now, partly because I play mostly my Wii and 360 (neither of which are modded) and partly because I'm trying to stop. I don't try to justify it anymore -- I used to be like the teenagers in this thread that think they "deserve" games or something, but that's not it. I know that my piracy isn't losing anybody money, since I generally didn't pirate stuff I would have ever bought. I know that there was no extra cost incurred to them for somebody else to copy it and send it on to me. I know these things, but the big thing that made me want to cut back is that I don't want to have to try to explain that to my 2-year-old as she grows up -- "It's wrong and very bad to steal things, unless they're virtual things, in which case it's OK sometimes, but you can't do it all the time or people will stop making them..."?

The thing is, the retarded anarchists above talking about "usually if somebody is charging money for something it's crap" have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. Much/most of the "free software" people advocate so hard for is actually sponsored by (for-profit) corporations like Novell who make money either selling hardware, selling modified/custom versions of the software, or selling support for it. Sure, a lot of e.g. Linux desktop environments or media players or whatever are made by high school kids or 25-year-olds in their spare time, but in many cases it shows. Microsoft has security problems because they're the biggest target, and they had some organizational problems that used to contribute to them. They also attract a lot of bitching from nerds (like me, I guess) who are brought up now to think that Linux is The Underdog, and Microsoft is The Man, and everybody wants to stick it to The Man. The reality is that their products sell well because they meet a lot of peoples' needs.

I've ranted enough, but I felt the need to say something about these kids that think they're "justified" in pirating -- no, it's not hurting anybody, but that doesn't mean it's right.

The only things I've pirated are the adobe and macromedia programs that cost upwards of $200. I think that's just a bit outrageous, but paid for flash mx 2004 with $150. I've downloaded a few movies on my computer, but only titles I purchased on vhs or dvd and want to take with me or that I've lost.