I did it for borderlands recently...pirated it for the DLC. I already had the first DLC on the 360.

that's about it...and foreign flicks..a lot of foreign flicks...and manga just for the scanlations. I mean I don't want to know that Kakashi has died for the nth time 5 months after everyone else right?

It started with Danger Mouse's The Grey Album, which is one of the rarest albums there is.

Now, I do it for albums when they cost over £10 in stores or on sites, rip off. I only pay for albums now for underground artists who actually deserve the proper funding because they have true talent. Ever heard of Lifeseeker or BC? Exactly, I dream of a world where everyone has.

I download movies too, but strictly for my ipod. I have most of the films in my DVD collection anyway, so technically not piracy. I'll tell ya what is piracy though, iTunes prices for films! Especially since most of the screen sizes aren't the right fitting for my iTouch. I'm anal enough to download the film for free and then run it through a resizer before putting it on my ipod.

When I used to, it was severely over-priced software and old games I couldn't get anywhere else. Unfortunately, Comcast got thier panties in a bunch about Might and Magic V, which from my research is ABANDONWARE.

I usually pirate when I have an album on vinyl or cassette already but I want it on my I-pod. I have never pirated games ever... except for old DOS games once in a while.

I'll Download Music and Some movies that I know will be so bad that I don't want to pay to see it in movies.

Basically I'll pirate things I don't want to give money to. Whether it be because the game is terrible or the politics of the company is ridiculous.

One of my favorite activities with an ex-girlfriend was to go to Border's and read everything they had in TPB for Marvel and DC. We would do this sometimes on a daily basis for hours at a time. We never bought anything.

If I were to do the same thing on my computer, is it the same thing? I wasn't going to pay for it anyway (which, of course, is not always true - anyone who didn't pick up the new Iron Fist series in paper back is a genital) so whether I am pirating on site or online, or both, is still up for debate in my mind.

What about ROMs? It's probably 50/50 for legit digital copies in my library.

I stream movies, mostly because of a long and difficult to explain or understand sexually abusive hatred that I have developed for the studio system of film development. I still go out to the cinemas, both because it is an experience in itself and because sometimes, I just want something to do well so they make more - that's going to require a little dough.

PC games are so cheap I'll just legit buy it. I tried cracking NWN because I can't find the CD-Key for mine, and ultimately gave up. I think I may have snagged FF: The Third Reich, but aside from that I don't bother.

Music is as available to me through Last FM as it is torrents. [Edit: I suspect that between torrents and LastFM/Pandora/etc that artists are getting far better distribution than before piracy was a big issue.] If I really like somebody (TOBACCO TOBACCO TOBACCO TOBACCO TOBACCO TOBACCO) I will buy their albums in LP, on CD, and drive out of my way to go to their concerts and meet them. There's a very talented artist in the Northeast US that goes by the name of Tobacco whom I've got all the albums for, actually (and my LP for Fucked up Friends is signed).

Ultimately, if you can give back directly to the person whom is responsible for creating that which you enjoy, you probably ought to. If there's a sea of immoral middlemen in between, I'm not sure you can sail over them or swim through them without getting dirty yourself.

I only pirate stuff that's hard to get a hold of, like old video games you can play on emulators. Besides I don't think anybody will give a shit if you're playing a pirated video game that stopped being sold almost 20 years ago. Plus I'm broke, I have to save all my money to get a drivable car since my current car is destroyed, so if I can pirate something and I know I can get away with it I will. What have I pirated so far? All I'll say are old school video game roms, all the other stuff I pirate I'm keeping to myself.

pirates rule. i once got in trouble for downloading the sims for pc lol

Overall, I'd argue that in some ways piracy is actually extremely healthy for their markets.

There's many camps of "pirates", there's the people who want the media, but can't afford it (therefore you're not exactly losing sales there), there's the camp of people who are unsure about the product, there's the camp of people who simply do not have access to the content in their area/language/whatever, there's the group of people who will download it purely because the content creator has pissed them off, and then there's the camp of people who won't pay for anything.

I'm pretty confident the last group is the minority.

Which means that, almost every aspect of piracy could benefit the original creators if they fixed something they're doing wrong! I'm going to specifically talk about PC games here, because it's the one everyone bitches about the most

Group A) People can't afford it.

Games are too expensive. It's a plain simple fact. They should not be $50-$60 USD and $100 USD equivalent in other countries. THAT'S TOO MUCH. Games need to be cheaper, in the $30 range for a game considered "blockbuster" caliber. This can be done by managing their personal budgets better. Most publishers waste their money in bizarre and insane ways.

There's also a large misconception that PC gaming is the most expensive way to play games, and it's simply not true. There isn't enough accurate information out there about this kind of stuff and it's gotten so bad, that developers are regurgitating the same bile ignorant game bloggers do. It's disgusting.

Group B) People aren't sure about your game

PC used to be king of demos that got people pumped. Now ... they don't usually get them, and if they do it isn't until AFTER the game is released. What kind of bullshit is that!?

The way to alleviate this is to be more intelligent about your schedules and actually have a sub team that will begin putting together a demo while the normal team is finishing the game. That way you get a stellar demo which will, undoubtedly, help sales and people will get a more polished representation of what they'll be playing.

Group C) It ain't in your country

This is just silly. These things are digital products, you're telling me, when you're writing the scripts for these games, while you're editing them you can't afford to hire a translation consulting agency to do the primary translations? And likewise you can't be bothered to hire voice actors at the same time and have teams to work on the sub-ten languages the game will eventually ship in!?

Failing to release your game simultaneously around the globe in this day, is pathetic.

Group D) Your pissed off fanbase.

In my opinion this is probably the largest group of pirates.

These are all the people you've back-stabbed and fucked over. Instigating archaic DRM systems that only hinder your product and make it unplayable. Purposefully releasing a poorly migrated version of the game and releasing it usually a year late! Not even trying to migrate your game to more platforms than Windows ...

All of these things together give the impression that you don't care about the platform at all ... but this is a bit of a cycled relationship. How can you expect people to be happy with your product if it's a piece of shit?

What needs to change? Treat it like an appropriate platform, not a second class citizen. It doesn't even make sense, because you generally have to develop on PC first ANYWAY.

If you combine all these really poor choices on the content provider's part with their inability to think up a 21st century (or even 20th century) system for getting people to buy the game ... they're shooting themselves in the foot and it's causing larger levels of piracy than there would normally be.

But, even WITH that, Piracy on PC still isn't as damaging as people think, it's only slightly higher than piracy on any given console. The platform is also not as reclusive as people believe. It shares something like 16% of the market, which is only 2% behind any of the three large consoles out there now.

So, my view on piracy is that ... in general, it's more indicative that you're not doing your job as a content provider than people trying to steam roll you and get your shit for free.

While I mainly emulate old games, I emulated some GBA games before. I'm not sure that counts since the DS was old at that point, but I suppose it does. I also used streaming sites to watch Nerima Daikon Brothers, Desert Punk and some episodes of Kino's Journey.

The only reason I did these is because it's impossible to find out of print stuff for me, and I'm dirt poor. I usually try to stick with legal streaming for anime, but I had little choice for those since I wanted to review them so bad. Sucks, but I never do this with new anime or games.

I think people who illegally torrent are spoiled idiots, or sometimes just selfish. An out of print anime or old ass game is one thing, but a brand new game? I know people on emulator websites who despise people like that.

I simply feel if you can still support a developer or company, you should do it. If you can't, then don't pirate it. However, once no longer avalible or hard to find anywhere, I don't see the issue with it.

I used to pirate shit until Uwe Boll told me that myself and my pirate mateys are the reason his movies have always done so poorly.

I pirate shit when I want to try it. If I like it, I go buy it...new if it's good. If I don't like it, it goes away never to be thought about again. It's like renting without dealing with shitty copies of discs that I can't ever get to work or dealing with any late fees. I'm sure somewhere there's copies of something I didn't like laying around on a hard drive somewhere that I forgot to wipe, but it's not like I'm enjoying it as it just sits there.

One of these days companies will wake up and figure out that piracy is just part of today's marketplace. It's not going away and you will never have enough resources at your disposal to combat it. Companies are better off realizing that if they put out a quality product...people will buy it. I look at game sales today and based on my own very uninformed opinion I say three things hurt game companies more than anything else, and in no particular order. Used game sales, pirating, releasing shitty games. They really have control over only one of those three.

I download subbed episodes of anime when they're released in Japan instead of waiting a ridiculous amount of time for them to be translated into English and released here, and even then, anime DVDs are the most expensive thing in shops, you could pay €40 for 3 episodes of a series.
When it comes to music, I download a lot of stuff, but when it comes to unsigned artists, or bands struggling to sell stuff, I won't "acquire" it, I'll buy it.

Ever hear of Cruchyroll? They do legal streams of subbed anime right after it airs in Japan, like Durarara and High School of the Dead.

I hate you, sorry nothing personall, but I worked in borders for five years and people who were like you were the lowliest kinda customers that I took pleasure in evicting from the store.

On the piracy thing, I don't download but I do stream alot of stuff.

We're all dickcheese.

Once I thought we were going to be thrown out, but the manager actually thanked us for our continued patronage because he thought our presence was good for the store. Not fucking kidding. Also, I was never a customer, because customers buy things.

I suppose he found my blue hair and her pink hair endearing?



I would never do something so uncomfortable, Link. We cuddled on the couch in the back when we read. Christ man.