"Page 2"? What's that?

Oh wait, I know. By "Page 2" you mean "That Gizmodo Dead Zone Most Readers Ignore And Do Not Click To Which Is A Shame Because Those Same Comments Could Have Easily Been Posted On Page 1 But Now That There Is A 20-Comments Per Threaded Page Limitation (As Compared To The Previous 100-Comments Format) We'll Just Never See Those Additional Comments And Any Experienced Gizmodo Commenter Knows Not To Bother Writing If Their Effort Is Going To Effectively Be Buried Alive There".

That "Page 2"?

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Sure, piracy is great until you're the one being harmed by the loss of income.

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Worst case scenario about most pirating is people who weren't gonna buy it any way still wont. And the actual outcome is people who weren't gonna buy it may actually buy another product related or the actual product itself to gain increased functionality of some kind.

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I'm not saying it's right, but it annoys me when people call it stealing.

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I absolutely agree with your simple and elegant Code: Don't Pirate. Nothing more needs or should be said past that.

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They don't really care about the everyday person pirating, they almost encourage it. Most people can't afford the software, especially at a young age. Parents aren't going to buy a kid $600 software that he doesn't even know how to use yet. Piracy helps grow the user-base by making the software available to even those who can't afford it. A larger user-base leads to more professionals using the software. Then, as professionals, they almost have to buy it.

Of course I'm sure Adobe is a special case. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with you, I just thought this was an interesting take and I wanted to share it.

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So, nobody loses their job when a product that sold for $500 each copy's sales drop by 50% due to piracy? Not one person ever has lost their job of it?

It is stealing. If I take a copy of your social security number, that I've downloaded off of the internet, and spread it around, and you suddenly find that your credit is shot. Did I steal it? Or did I infringe upon the copyright of your SSN?

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I'm sorry, but there are real people who put thousands of hours of their lives into creating the very software that you won't buy, but feel perfectly OK stealing it.

So, if you owned a car lot, and I stole one of your cars that I had no intention of every buying, it's not theft? Oh, wait, because there's a physical object that's what makes it stealing? So, if someone steals your comedy routine and becomes rich (*cough*Dennis Leary*cough*), while you get nothing it's not theft?

There's a reason why it is called intellectual property. Just because it isn't a physical asset, doesn't mean it has no value if you steal it for use.

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If it doesn't belong to you and you take it without permission, it's stealing.

It doesn't matter if you'd have bought it or not. it doesn't matter if they're losing a sale or not. If someone comes to your house and steals a car, is it not theft because you weren't going to sell it? What kind of logic is that?

If you like free trials, great. I do too. Make a suggestion to the authors that they make trials available, or try it out at work or at a friend if he or she owns a copy of whatever it is you want to try.

Don't just make up some self-serving words to justify your stealing.

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While I appreciate your effort at being even-handed in your comment, I have to disagree with you.

You say you download Photoshop and "nobody has lost anything" 'cuz you wouldn''t have paid for it anyway. Well, I submit that you are wrong. You download Photoshop, use it in whatever way you want, and there IS somebody who has had a financial impact--ME and the THOUSANDS of other legal Photoshop users who, having paid for their license, are now in competition with and a financial disadvantage to those who have NOT paid for said license.

To create whatever images you create in Photoshop, without the expense of a license, is work not going to a licensed Photoshop user. You say you wouldn't have gone to a licensed Photoshop creator? I believe you...but then you should not benefit from Photoshop's usage. Yet those photos you have fixed or manipulated are posted on Flickr or PhotoBucket and compete with the photos of others--and please don't try to say that a Gizmodo afcionado never posts his/her work publicly.

I respectfully suggest that, for those on a tighter budget, purchase any one of the under $100 image editors, pay for it--supporint the smaller app developers in the process--and be done with it.

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*and at a financial*

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That $10 movie ticket is padded to account for theft. The $5 case of soda is padded to account for theft. The $50 software download is padded to account for theft.

Because of people like you, who don't bother to create their own entertainment when funds run low, others pay more. Period. That's how it works. They absorb it as a cost of doing business, and pass it on to others. Which makes it more difficult for 'Poor' people to afford.

I also go to concerts, I go to movies, I buy movies, I buy CDs when I go to concerts. I also own legal copies of all of my software. *Gasp*

Crazy isn't it? If your entertainment value needs to stretch, then purchase games worth your money. Wait until they're $20 instead of $50. Purchase games with user created content. (IE: Counter-strike or Day of Defeat)

Or, play around with the free tools and make your OWN content to share with others.

You're a leech. You're not creating, you're feeding off of others. It is obvious you feel no moral pains over it, because it isn't your job on the line, your product that you've dreamed of bringing to the market for years, your 15 minutes of fame for your iPhone app on Gizmodo.com

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Well then, that's just too damned bad, isn't it? Here, let me play a sad violin song to accompany your whines.

You are rationalizing unfair behavior, just as others in this thread have said. Being part of a civilized community includes taking responsibility for yourself and your actions. Please consider doing so.

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Let's see. Dictionary.dom

Root word Steal

[dictionary.reference.com]

"to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment."

So, tell me, what is the definition of stealing again?

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Why don't make softwares cheaper? If you guys can make so much money* with piracy around, you guys can lower the price to make pirating not worth the time and effort.

*Software engineers are perceived to make lots and lots of money..

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I can't afford all of this, but I want all of this, so I'm just going to take it. It's not hurting anyone is it?

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This is something that COST someone money to make. If it isn't worth the price being charged, then you shouldn't buy it. Otherwise what you're doing is saying, "This has value to me, but I'm still not willing to pay for it because I don't feel I should have to"

If it had no value, you wouldn't want it. If you had empathy for the fact that you are affecting people's lives by stealing, you would simply not steal it out of respect for them and their creation.

No, instead it's me me me, want want want, I must be entertained for freeeeee!

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You can say you don't pirate, but I wont believe you :)

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I develop software for a living and I can tell you that the high price software model is dying because its a poor marketing system. You would much rather have your software accessible to as many people as possible to develop brand loyalty and skill specialization with your product. Businesses are then willing to spend substantial amounts on support contracts for the software their employees are committed to. IBM, for example, makes billions of dollars every year off of "professional services" for software and systems.

The issue with music is similar in that you're assuming that a downloaded copy is a lost sale. This is probably at least partially true for music, but far less than a 1:1 ratio. The issue of piracy in music is also largely solved by offering subscription services like the Zune Pass. You give people access to everything for a set fee, and allow them to permanently own a few songs as a result. Basically, you're just letting them try everything and committing them to buying X number of songs a month.

BTW, you SSN example also makes no sense. It's not relevant because the copies of the SSN are not independent entities since they are all part of a globally unique identity. One persons' usage precludes another person's usage, which is not the case in any of the situations in discussion here. There is actually a significant difference between globally unique items and replicated information which is why we have different sets of laws to address them.

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Some of the best musicians I've ever heard do nothing more than play on a beatup old guitar.

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No one has cited a single credible, based-on-facts, outside-of-their-own-analogies source for how violating a copyright *actually* causes damage. Both sides (and myself in times past) simply say "Cause A happens, drifts into the market, unprovable-cause-and-effect later, people lose jobs." Sometimes people lose jobs because companies perform poorly. Sometimes people who download things illegally actually do, down the chain, result in new sales for companies. You can't deny empirically deny this fact anymore than you can confirm that a particular download led to a particular job being lost.

It's not a question of logistics. Even if it was, I highly doubt that verifiable proof that piracy helps media or software companies would change your public service announcement induced sense of ethics.

The bigger point of this article (which has long been lost in this argument) is that, whatever you do, you treat the people you get content from with respect and give them the credit due them.

The pirates (the ethical ones anyway) don't differ from you in this regard. Simply in the way the way they think that the situation should be handled, given our limited perspective of how the internet works.

P.S.

I don't really mean to single out the traditional copyright law advocates. The need to think is on both sides of the argument. I just can't stand the overly simplistic "Every song you download is equal to one dollar that a musical artist does not have" mentality. Of course, those who think that they can download whatever they want all the time anytime, never buy anything, and thing that the media/software economy is gonna be fine...well, that's moronic, too.

That being said, I think this article is spot on, in most respects. Don't treat virtual material like it's physical and all the rules that apply, but in whatever you download, treat your contemporaries with respect, and give where it's due. According to what's right, not according to the law, necessarily.

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I use a good amount of open source software. I legally own a copy of every game I play. I buy music. I buy movies. I probably spend $100 per month on movies and music, with a couple of splurges ($500-750) for lots of music once to twice a year.

But, that's pretty much all I buy. The last computer game I purchased was Left 4 Dead. Prior to that, Warhammer Online. Prior to that? Bioshock...

I do not own, and have not played, most of the popular games out there because I cannot afford it. So, I buy when something catches my eye, not every game out there.

In fact, 2 more movies just showed up on my desk today. Moving starring Richard Pryor, and Of the Dead. Next purchase will probably be a copy of Tokyo Zombie. I'd love to own a copy of Megaforce, but alas Barry Bostwick's finest movie ever isn't legally available on DVD in the US.

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IE: Windows requiring activation keys.

And, more than one person CAN use a SSN, it's just technically illegal to do so.

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And I was being facetious about the fax machine. I know how much the fucking thing gets used, as I have to fix it when shit goes wrong here.

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"A nice example of this would be say, copying everything posted here on Giz verbatim, 24/7, and hosting it on a site that doesn't have advertisements."

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And I, in turn and for similar reasons, pass a friended "heart" onto you.

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Yes, advertisers pay according to how many viewers they have, and that viewer-number is determined by Neilsen families.

However, how much broadcasters can charge for their ad slots on a per-viewer basis is determined by the rate of return of their ads.

In the extreme case, let us say that everyone except Neilsen families downloads their TV shows. Then there is no way that advertisers would get any return on their ad buys, because only a small percentage of Neilsen families would be going out to buy their crap.

This is to say nothing of the effect that downloading TV shows has on sales of DVD box sets, which can be a major source of revenue.

Not that I care personally, but thems the breaks.

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If they don't get any bump in sales from their ads, they don't buy more (maybe they get a better commercial, because sometimes those just suck).

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1:1 should be the rule.

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For example, you can grab an HD episode of Battlestar at ~1GB at your downstream speed in 1 hour, then you should seed 1GB worth in 4 hours on your upstream (in this example your up is 1/4 of your down).

If someone's downloading non-stop, then yeah, they're not gonna hit 1:1 unless they're throttling their own downloads (which no one in their right mind would do under normal circumstances).

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Anyone who goes by these was never really a pirate to begin with. Might as well wrap that black t-shirt around your head and join the rest of the ninjas. I think they're currently in an origami-folding circle talking about their menstrual cycles...

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