A new thread was needed? Seriously?

You probably should have posted this in the original thread rather than start a new one.  But I am with you, DEATH (not literally though) to all those who steal intellectual property! 

If they were enforcing law without being preferential, I'd be happy.  What you have in western countries is a rapidly expanding power base in copyright and patent based industries.  The big companies have had our politicians bought and paid for for decades now, so they've been steadily expanding "rights" over time.  The original intent was to reward someone for an idea by giving them exclusive control long enough to reach market saturation.  This was when it could take ten years to get your book published and shipped out to the various population centers.  Now, in an age where the time from initial publication to market saturation would take a few months instead, copyrights outlive their authors.

Then there are all the obvious examples of insanity, like whenever Marvel decides to take someone to court over a so called infringement.  IP laws are used as a weapon to destroy competition more often than not.  The utterly inane practice of end user licensing agreements, inarguable in their paradoxical status as a supposedly legal means of altering a sale contract without prior notification.  Anyone honest(actually honest, not just a nice guy) will admit it's a royally fucked situation with the DMCA being in direct violation of the basic contract laws they tacked it onto.  Not that voiding contracts seems to bother anyone in DC...

While it's wrong to avoid purchasing things by using them for free, the system has been butchered by the publishing titans to the point where I just can't feel any sympathy for them.  It's a twisted world, but there's justice in Sony losing sales when they pull shit like installing a rootkit on their customers computers.  I'm all for voting with your wallet, but when Uncle is helping them fuck you over, it's a losing battle thanks to the apathetic masses that are just too stupid to elect something besides a lawyer.

I feel a little bad for pirated companies that aren't actively trying to give their own customers the finger, but then I bought both Gal Civ games and their expansions because they aren't, and not because I found the first one terribly interesting.  I'm not particularly bothered even there though, the existence of a perpetually expanding copyright market proves beyond a doubt that it's still profitable.  If it were to, of all things, actually shrink in response, I might get to the point where I'd start thinking one sided enforcement was something besides a really bad idea.  Currently I'd rather wait and hope all the assholes buying up lawmakers go out of business first.

I figure that will happen shortly after we wise up and kill all the lawyers off, which wont happen till hell freezes over, but wishful thinking is always nice as long as you recognize you're deluding yourself.

Simple Solution:  Buy it instead!  If you cannot afford it, then earn the money somehow to buy it, but never ever steal from anyone.  I would sooner shovel garbage in order to earn something I wanted than to infringe on the rights of someone else. I'll give you a for instance.

There is an author on this site that makes the finest skins I have ever seen, or will ever see, and this person sells some of their work. This person has a wife and two children at home to support, lives at the poverty level and cannot work a regular job.  Within one day of releasing a new skin, it is all over the Internet on illegal sites being made available for free download. Heck, it even happens to me quite often! Is this right? Absolutely not!

Some people depend on the meager income they make from selling their work in order to live, and people who illegally post copyrighted material on other sites in my opinion are lower than than lowest life form on this planet.  They are the scum of the Earth, and I hope they rot in hell! 

Wonderful, now how about the guy with the rootkit CD's he can't transfer to his computer without cleaning the crap back out of the OS afterwards?  Then there's the ones that just don't work on a lot of drives.  All of my music is on my computer, all of the music on my computer came off a physical CD I popped into the drive to put it there.  It's a rare event when I actually use a CD.  If I were less observant of my surroundings, and slightly more into modern rock and classic, I could have a bit of a problem accomplishing that feat.

Sob stories, no matter how real and how frequent, don't make the state of things anything but fucked on both sides of the equation.

This is a joke, right?  Neither thread actually serves anything but a momentary distraction.

...and your point is?

Because it creates repetitive threads in the general forums?

Hardcore gamers play a lot of games, consequently they also pirate a lot. These same pirates however also buy a lot of games(whether for an online component or brand loyalty) because these people just play more games than the average customer.

Are you entitled to steal games because you also buy a lot of games? 

Death to me! we don't need shops selling things we do as hobbies 99% of the world is gonna be entrepenure and you can get real original on ways to make money out of fans without 35000 albums at the rate of 10 - 20 dollars a cd.   amen!

-jeremy Sr.

Make an album art book or pay site for the record company or something smart not charge 10 to 20 dollars a cd and expect (our market for music is so small) us to be happy when there are only 100 bands being sold becuase the market seems big at that price.

100 bands at best buy and 350,000,000 people in america!

Also 350,000,000 Americans buying 35,000,000 records at 10$ a piece is just ideotic.  A best buy size store that sold music at 1$ an album would be better than making less music profitable and every soul have to buy every album they have. -Jeremy Sr.

Light star is out of touch.   Entrepenure ship is the future of the country not keeping the traditions of old buisiness that need improving. -Jeremy Sr.

@lifekatana and Tasunke.

You guys ARE aware of the fact that the vast majority of "the people of the West" are working hard every day just to barely get by? And that there is a growing proportion of the "o so rich westeners" who lives beneath the poverty-line?

I am always suprised that a lot of people obviously still think of "the West" as a place where the rivers are full of milk and the honey runs down the streets. Until these same people actually immigrate to "the West" and find out that they have to work extremely hard if they want to have food on the table and a roof over their head, provided they even find a job. Just as in any other place of the world.

I don't deny that we still have a good life when compared to people being born in some of the more unfortunate third-world countries, but pointing a finger at the "rich" west and crying "give me" and "why have you and we don't" won't really improve the situation for anybody (as recent history and all the billions pumped into the third-world countries during that time has shown). Pointing the finger at their own (often corrupt) governements on the other hand might do the trick.

In the context of pirating that would translate into: Just because you can't afford the newest fad-game the very moment it is realeased (note that you obviously can affort the newest hardware to run this newest game, as well as the fast internet-connection to illegally download it so you are obviously as rich as most "westerners") does not mean you are discriminated against. Either wait until it is on sale (most of the time no more than a few months), which also has the advantage that most of the bugs are patched and that the game actually works as initially announced, or just save up the money for it ("the people of the west" do that as well, you know!).

As to the point that AgentNihilist and others made; I agree to a large part with you. I have been in the unfortunate situation myself where I was actually forced to download a pirated version of my legally purchased game (or in some lesser cases only the no-DVD patch for it) just to be able to play it on my laptop which is not always online (and which I want to keep that way). Which of course puts me in a uncomfortable situation. On the one hand I am grateful to the pirates that they provide me with the means to play the game, on the other hand I am aware the the vast majority probably downloads the game just because the don't want to fork out the money but feel entitlet to have everything they wish for anyway.

I believe a change in thinking is needed from both the commercial as well as the private side. Stardock and a few other smaller companies have made the first step, but now we need to show them that their trust and their willingness to make this first step will be rewarded. Downloading their games illegally betrays that trust and might either financially destroy those smaller companies or turn their attention to the less than savouriy business practises of larger game companies (no names needed here, we all know them).