Buying Used and Pirating...

Originally Posted by Cirno

IT'S LIKE I NEVER LEFT /v/!

I buy used if the games are hard to find new. What's so hard about that.

Pirating, however, just seems retarded to me. That's just how I feel. If I want to own something, I'd rather have a physical copy of the thing -- so long as it's reasonably priced. I still hate piracy, although I generally find it deplorable when gamers 'steal' new games and then whine about their favorite developers shutting down or releasing crappy rehashes.

What's more annoying is when gamers take a sanctimonious stance on draconian DRM because "IT'S REALLY HARD TO USE AND IT BREAKS THE GAME AND MIGHT BREAK MY COMPUTER!!!" Reddit is full of links where the guy just goes "I was all ready to play <insert popular game here> and then I saw the SecuROM logo, so I turned the game off." What he forgets to mention is that SecuROM turned the game off for him, because he'd pirated it.

Do not go around the Internet, you dumbasses, prancing around and flouting law in open view of EVERYONE and then complain when they start locking down the games really tight to keep you from stealing them. You idiots ruined it for the rest of us, don't try to act like you're not responsible. And especially don't try to flip the issue on them by claiming "DRM causes people to pirate games" because that's a load of bullshit.

Granted, SecuROM is kind of a bad example to bring up as it has had issues in the past, but still. People complaining about install limits are also kind of annoying. They give you 5 installs, you whiny bastards. If you're having to reinstall your OS more than 4 times in the short time you're playing the game du jour, you're either a hobbyist who should fucking know better and install on a partition that doesn't go anywhere or you're really pissed that you can't just install it on every friends' computer as if this were 1992. And if you actually own 5 computers that you'd like to play it on, and really need to install it on all of them, then can I borrow a few hundred thousand dollars, please?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Lord Jaroh

I wouldn't mind copying my DVDs onto my hard drive for convenience, but I can't, because "I'm not allowed".

It's called copyright. You're allowed to copy DVDs all you want but the second you use a program to destroy copyright protection, you're on the wrong side of the law. This has been on the books for years. Whether or not the DMCA trumps fair use is still up in the air, but until a court rules in the other direction, then you're stuck, and unless you're a lawyer no amount of bitching's going to change anything.

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Is it alright lending a game to a buddy to play? How about borrowing books from a library rather than buying them? Is it alright if I record a song off the radio to listen to? How about copying something off T.V. to watch later? How about buying a game at a garage sale? Or a book? Or a CD? Buying a car used privately?

Yes, yes (and how is this an applicable example to what we're talking about in any way), yes (as long as it's for your own use, under the Fair Use Doctrine), yes (again, private use only), and the last four are yes because you're buying something owned by someone else. What's your point?

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There are so many arguements against DRM and the anti-consumer piracy/copyright laws that are currently in place that it's not even funny.

I'd love to hear them.

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It'd be nice if our laws weren't decided by the same people who stand to make the most money from them.

Because congresspeople are also recording artists/game developers/movie directors.

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DRM only hurts legitimate users, and is a drain on resources that could be otherwise spent upon making more or better games or actually enriching the hobby in some way.

Which would you rather see, a company spending time making sure people actually have to buy their game, or a company spend all of their time making the game amazing only to see 90% of the people who play it pirate it because reddit users people online would rather download it for free? It's hard to make money to pay people to make great games if no one buys the game.

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Rather than quotes, I'll just generally offer this mea culpa before I continue to make an ass of myself.

I realized as I used that article that it didn't prove anything aside from the fact that it was the easiest link I could find to something that said THIS GOT PIRATED LOTS. The mistake I've made in this thread consistently, and it's one I've made a lot lately, is I'm attempting to argue a general internet stereotype argument (DRM is 100% evil so I will pirate everything in protest) rather than the argument at hand, and it makes me look incredibly pro-DRM and anti-piracy.

It's not that I think DRM, especially the kinds that have been put forth, are the best thing ever and completely justified. I simply realize that, as a pirate myself, I'm part of the problem that DRM is designed to fight, and figure I (and pirates in general, hence my beef with, say, reddit) really have no place bitching about it. That's the argument I've been trying to make, sadly, which is not the argument the rest of the thread is engaged in.

I've said some dumb things in this thread already, and I hope the preceding wasn't more dumb stuff, because I really am just trying to make clear my thought process here.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.