Mathieulh's opinion on piracy

Do you have anything to declare?

Originally Posted by Ooops

Having cannabis in your pocket in a public place in France is forbidden by law, but in fact you don't get arrested unless the quantity exceed the reasonable usage. Why ? Because millions of people use cannabis in France as millions others drink beer or wine without disturbing anyone.

I guess you'll say that they're wrong because they're breaking the law. In such a case you'll be perceived as an asshole by all the people use cannabis gently, but fine that's your right. You could judge this usage wrong because it's a drug, because of freaks or whatever reason but if you do so by considering there's no civilized mean to use cannabis, then you'll be perceived as an ignorant asshole.

Yes smoking cannabis is breaking the law rightly or wrongly that doesn't really matter.. what matters is both smoking dope and piracy cause harm. Not the best example considering all the new medical evidence.

Originally Posted by Ooops

I guess you'll say that they're wrong because they're breaking the law. In such a case you'll be perceived as an asshole by all the people use cannabis gently, but fine that's your right.

Wha? My original point was that running full ISOs without paying is piracy. I don't know how you got onto cannabis, nor do I really care to discuss it. Although if your interests lie in pirating games and smoking cannabis, well more power to you I suppose. Like I said earlier, it's not within my responsibility to imprint social values on you; that's for your parents and peers to do (or not do).

I'm done in this thread. I think i've made the point I was originally making adequately clear. Any further replies would only be repeating myself. Have a good day!

Originally Posted by jashsu

My original point was that running full ISOs without paying is piracy.

So, if you pay then its not piracy? As I've said in other threads I did download GTA:CW on Monday then I brought it on Friday(it wasn't available to buy till then) so does that mean the version I downloaded still a pirated version or its now a backup as I own it?

Here in Aus backups are legal. If I own any game I can play it however I feel like so if I want to rip a UMD to ISO and play it from a MS then I can.

I would like to see how many people bother to mod a console to make backups if they buy originals. How many are they? 1%, 2%?

Originally Posted by JoMacHo

I would like to see how many people bother to mod a console to make backups if they buy originals. How many are they? 1%, 2%?

If it is only 1 or 2% then why are devs complaining about pirates??? 2% of game sales is a pretty small percentage. It probably costs them more in complaining than losing 2% of sales. Example, everytime I hear about a iPhone Dev complaining about a game that's 98% pirated I then go get it to see what the fuss is all about. I wouldn't have got it if they didn't complain about it.

I got a PS3 and it can play PS2 backups, even that I own the originals so I guess I'm in that 1 or 2%

The main reason why I pirate is if its banned then I will get it. Or its downloadable before its in the shops here.

I mean obviously the people that buy games and use their own backups, or at least they say so. Real piracy is certainly a very large number, otherwise devs wouldn't complain.

I've been involved in several threads to the tune of this one, and one thing rings true (I've said this many times before), no one in this scene's (I'll even go as far as to say, no one in any games console modding scene's) hands are completely clean of piracy, period. To get all self-righteous and make such claims is frankly a little stupid, and completely transparent.

As far as I remember (and that's a bit longer that jashsu seems to believe), I've never met or heard of someone completeley clean of everything. God helps the one who still believe all matters are black or white after having left childhood.

We got a sentence in France about this: "All kids are socialists. What's interesting is to see how many time it takes to someone to become a capitalist, eventually."

Now reducing the problem of piracy to only a "because people are bad" is a joke, not only of intellectual dishonesty but also has a political sense.

We also got an independant and public institution called National Institute of Economic Statistics (INSEE), which is in charge of collecting all sort of data about economy, society etc. Their website is in French sorry but you can freely consult it: (www.insee.fr) and google translates it quite good since it's mostly technical.

What do you learn if you do so ?

- During the last 10 years the average amount of money spend in cultural goods by families has not varied, given the variation of retail prices, wages etc.
- During the last 10 years the proportion of the 'cultural budget' in the families's total budget has not varied either
- During this period of time, people bought increasingly more DVDs and video games with the democratisation of hardware and the increasing acceptance of gaming in the main culture.

So given a constant cultural budget this obviously means that people had spend less and less money in CDs. But instead of facing the situation and its consequences CD majors accused Internet and blamed people, very convenient.

It makes me remember when P2P began to be prosecuted, someone built a website with hundreds-long list of music albums. The page something like that:

"It's the list of all the MP3s that I downloaded from Internet. From every of these I own the original vinyl media, they took me years and a consequent som of money to gather and I won't pay you a second time and certainly not at such high prices. So I dare you to arrest me, because you are the thieves and I'm the honest man."

I didn't heard of him since I heard that in the news, but my point is that such an example amongst many is very discutable morally and technically as is "piracy" as a whole and some people have a strong interest not to discuss it, outside of this boards that is.

Well I said that I was done with this thread but I just can't let this gem go by uncontested:

Originally Posted by Ooops

We got a sentence in France about this: "All kids are socialists. What's interesting is to see how many time it takes to someone to become a capitalist, eventually."

Supporting piracy is not socialism, supporting piracy is anarchism. In a crude and simple explanation: socialism is generally used by laypersons to describe systems wherein wealth is distributed amongst all peoples (Important point: many people fail to understand that from an economist pov, the capital referred to describes raw goods and means of production, NOT personal belongings. That is to say in socialist states, your neighbor doesn't actually also partially own your car.)

However, to claim property that is not yours as your own outside of the framework of LAW is not socialism, it is anarchism. To say that you deserve to obtain any personal belonging without payment under the guise of "socialism" is laughable beyond belief.

Frankly, the main issue at hand is not that the actions of piracy goes against my personal beliefs and judgments. What I think and believe have no real impact or importance to the world at large. The more important point is that piracy on the PSP is causing very big, very real financial problems for PSP game developers/producers. That has the effect of making the PSP a less viable, less attractive platform for game makers.

*woooosh*

I just heard the point once again flying high above your head.

Let me get the political point straight about piracy in general:

- things are expensive both to produce and both to buy
- piracy helps the buyers but not the producers
- producers complains about that to law makers
- law makers decide to punish pirating people
- problem is supposed to be solved for producers

That's nice and all but in fact it doesn't work that way. This is why for example we pay a tax every year for having a TV at home AND being allowed to record what's broadcasted and to share the copy. The income is distributed to producers and that is we call fair use. It was also the political answer to producers crying about TV recorders being sold that would make them die, as they already cried about K7 tape recorders that would make them die.

They eventually died because the technology changed. Adapt or you die, that's a fundamental law of capitalism, right ? People now can connect and share worldwide, you have to adapt to that.

Nowadays we pay a tax on everything that is able to store data on it: hard disk drives, mp3 players etc. Its income is also redistributed to producers. But instead of allowing fair use and thus INCITE people to buy, law makers listen to producers and disallow it.

So how would you call making money on a practice disallowed by law ? Oh yes, when people do it it's anarchy. Haha you're a joke man and that was just another example.

What about a P2P network with a monthly fee ? What about a no-limit access to video, music or games with a monthly or whatever fee ? Of course capitalists are reluctant to envisage such means of distribution because for example of their political nature, but they'll have to if they want to stay in the cultural business within a worldwide network.

Oh but it's already happening with online distribution and you know that perfectly of course. Why is this happening ? Think a bit or get lost, frankly I don't care.

Wow, no new CFW and all the peeps here start waxing philosophical! The way I took Math's tone & context was that it sounds like he got busted for something and that was his full-blown apology to a game dev. Listen to the tone, he is respectful to the point of being absolutely repentant as if something very important depends upon it. He also sounds a bit burnt that people are selling his work and charging people for something that never was meant to be sold. I don't blame him for that, those people are just plain shady but I also know karma's a sharp boomarang just waiting to catch the back of your head when you least expect it.

Remember, $ony has some major-deep pockets and can pull strings like no other with all their lawyers and pocket-politicians. If someone is hurting their "perceived" bottom-line, they will go after them with full contingent of dobermans in tow. Many of the CFW devs have also been at this game for a long time and anyone who knows anything about operating in the grey knows that eventually if you cross the line too often and get too comfortable doing it, you'll drop your guard, get careless and become fodder for the people you might be operating against.

Of course it could also be that since these guys/gals have been at it for so long they've just plain ran out of time and have to move on to something that puts food on the table. As pointed out, the hacker community is like a hydra, one head gets chopped off and two take its place. Give 'em time, there are plenty of kids rearing to stick it to the man or rise to a challenge.

bottom line CFW is not about piracy. It's like blaming the internet for fewer people using the public library or ipod(mp3) for people stop buying music. the center of the blame are the ISO backup supporting, downloading internet sites. Now, thats piracy.

People should look the economy and how this play a role in fewer sales.

Originally Posted by azayzel

Wow, no new CFW and all the peeps here start waxing philosophical! The way I took Math's tone & context was that it sounds like he got busted for something and that was his full-blown apology to a game dev. Listen to the tone, he is respectful to the point of being absolutely repentant as if something very important depends upon it. He also sounds a bit burnt that people are selling his work and charging people for something that never was meant to be sold. I don't blame him for that, those people are just plain shady but I also know karma's a sharp boomarang just waiting to catch the back of your head when you least expect it.

Remember, $ony has some major-deep pockets and can pull strings like no other with all their lawyers and pocket-politicians. If someone is hurting their "perceived" bottom-line, they will go after them with full contingent of dobermans in tow. Many of the CFW devs have also been at this game for a long time and anyone who knows anything about operating in the grey knows that eventually if you cross the line too often and get too comfortable doing it, you'll drop your guard, get careless and become fodder for the people you might be operating against.

Of course it could also be that since these guys/gals have been at it for so long they've just plain ran out of time and have to move on to something that puts food on the table. As pointed out, the hacker community is like a hydra, one head gets chopped off and two take its place. Give 'em time, there are plenty of kids rearing to stick it to the man or rise to a challenge.

No I never got busted for anything, and everything I did as a developer was perfectly legal (at least in the country I live in)

Please stop the pointless assumptions.

Demos (demos.co.uk) has published the study of a survey amongst web users concerning music usage, dowloading etc. For those with some time, it's quite interesting to read: http://www.demos.co.uk/files/DemosMusicsurvey.ppt.

Some extracts:

- 80% of illegal downloaders also buy music in a form or another (digital/physical)
- 40% of illegal downloaders do it because "they want to try before to buy"
- 10% of illegal downloaders do it because "they don't care about copyright"


Shocking, isn't it ? That must be some biased communist propaganda for sure, haha.