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@h3ll True... I'm still going to torrent mr robot.

@h3ll I disagree. Hail piracy and the power of the Internet. A new Titan will rise.

We as citizens are harassed to give away our hard earned dollars at every turn for virtually every service. Nothing is free any more or for personal enjoyment. Long live torrenting

@h3ll When a man buys a boat, he intends to bring his family, maybe a few friends, with him on this boat. The individual believes the product is worth less than he pays for it, but he pays anyway because he is able to share it's worth. The same goes for torrenting: in a non-negotiable market for products, the user wants to acquire the product, but at a lower cost because it can't be legally shared. Since the market is non-negotiable, the cost is either $$$ or 0, and for many people, that's an easy decision to make.

@h3ll Lol you think they don't still live millionaire lifestyles because people torrent their stuff?

@h3ll Lets say I don't want Photoshop because I don't plan on using it. Oh, but I've found a torrent of it, I guess I'll grab a copy. Now I have paid software for free that I never intended on buying in the first place. You can't categorize that as lost sales.

@h3ll Piracy != Stealing

As long as I can pay my bills I would rather have people use what I create. In the movie world most of the big films make a profit even with the amount of piracy... Also a lot of people who pirate wouldn't have paid/bought that service anyway so its not 1 download is 1 lost sale its gonna be more like a 10:1 ratio

@h3ll the work was paid it's the greedy company that isn't being paid

@Tippy I love this. You're literally wasting your time even installing it just because it's free. Unbelievable.

You can't argue FOR piracy.. it's stealing, no matter how you turn it.

I still use Popcorn Time and such.. but it is theft

@SithLord Piracy improves the quality of life for the majority. The equivalent would be one very wealthy man buying a lambourghini, and many poor people copying that lambourghini. The wealthy man still has the lambourghini, but the poor people do too.

When I look at piracy, I don't look at the business and say they're losing all that money. I look at the persons who help make whatever it is that aren't really seeing any of the profits. And, a product reaching some set goal can be difference between those persons getting a bonus or not.

On the other hand, piracy does serve a purpose. Let me give some anecdotal evidence. I grew up in a third world country and when I was in school, the only access you had to certain tools were on shared systems. Systems that were generally used for classes and were only available between the hours of 8 and 6. From my experience, the persons who only ever used the tools during class, most of them never even graduated and the rest of them, for the most part, aren't working in that capacity now.

The persons who did pirate the expensive tools are the ones who went on to use them professionally and are the ones who can now afford to pay for them.

The market is over saturated with artsy creative types, if one falls there are hundreds that will claim their place, media should be for entertainment not profit as it serves little purpose outside its consumption. Products that affect longevity or ease of life are what are valuable and worth money

@h3ll your reference to a store doesn't equate to digital media. The copying of a product doesn't delete the original. I fully believe in paying for and supporting software and media. There would be little to digital piracy if the products themselves were reasonably priced. Additionally, the punishment for piracy is so blown out over piracy, (at least in the us) when I can fined in the 100 to 10000 times the value of the COPIED software, you have a problem. Can you name a single company that has been bankrupted because people pirated their product and they couldn't make back their development costs?

Still can't justify stealing.

@SithLord There's more nuance to it than that. And some companies definitely put themselves in a position for their products to be pirated.

Case in point, you're a software company and you approach an educational institution to sell them software for them to use as part of their curriculum. The issue is, you've only got Pro and Enterprise versions of your software. What's a student to do?

When there are 250 computers that serve 7,000 students but you've got a project due that's worth 50% of your grade, what would you do? Do you end up failing your course because you just can't get the time to work on your project? No. Do you buy the product that costs half of your tuition when you're already on student loan? No. Do you pirate said software so that you don't fail? Yes.

So in this very situation, that's the company's fault for getting their product pirated.

@MLK79 no. Absolutely not. "Well I need that car to win the race, so I'll steal it as I cannot afford it" is not a reason to steal.

You can't justify theft. Never. Ever. Imagine if you got paid $0 from half of your clients / on half of your paychecks, because someone decided that they couldn't afford to pay but needed it anyway.

@SithLord Humanity is flawed. No matter how much someone wants to say they won't do something, once they're put into a situation that's dire enough, they will do it.

I'm pretty certain if you went to school where I went to, and your choice was between pirating software so you can actually pass your course or failing, you'd go the pirating route. It might not be you first choice, but when shit hits the fan, you would.

@SithLord again, your equating piracy of consumer software and consumer media to theft if a physical object and a contracted software. In your cases, the owner loses the product or time spent creating a specialized piece of work. That isn't the case from piracy of mass marketed media. In mad marketed media, the publishers still sell millions of copies and the main pirates of their content, are people who likely wouldn't ever purchase it at the price they are selling. Example I may buy dvds see one hand but I rarly buy them new. Because the price doesn't justify the value of the product, and the price has been artificially raised by the publishers. I don't torrent myself as I CAN afford to waste money on a movie or software that is overpriced. However I understand why people do. Steam handles the issue correctly by selling media & software at a reasonable price.

@brettmoan *second hand

@brettmoan To add to your point, I've got a Netflix subscription but get access to around half the catalogue of someone in America even though I pay the same price as them.

And if you think that's bad, I'll try to watch something to only realise that it is in Spanish, even though I don't speak Spanish, all because of some regional bullshit.

@brettmoan I do torrent stuff, but I still think you can't justify it. Never. It's theft.

@MLK79 because publishers want to make money too. Granting global access for $10.000 (example) would make them lose so many money.. that's why Netflix pays a license almost pr. location.

@MLK79 I never said that I would not pirate stuff ( I do, tons) I'm simply saying that it's still not something you can justify

@SithLord I don't have a problem with publishers making money. My issue is when I as a consumer is paying the same money as someone else for a vastly inferior version of that product.

Now, where I disagree with you, is that I don't think you can say it's never justified. For instance, if you went and bought a movie on DVD and went home to discover that it doesn't work so you take it back and they don't want to replace it. I think you're inherently justified if you decide to go online and download said movie now.

@MLK79 FYI, in that circumstance, you're not pirating. You actually purchased a "license to the copywrite". Buy purchasing a physic DVD or Blu-ray you are actually lawfully entitled to one secondary or "backup" copy. Specifically for the event of damage to the playability of the original disc. The law does not specify that the copy must be made from the purchased disc. This is all too my understanding of current copywrite law, but IANAL. In my understanding, It's perfectly legal to purchase a disc and then use a torrent to download your backup. However there are some caveats, the law wouldn't allow you to buy the standard edition and then torrent a extended edition or higher quality copy. It would need to be the exact version. (not likely you'd ever need to defend your self but I thought I'd clarify)

@brettmoan youve a good point regarding the school example and Microsft have actually been trying to tackle that problem by chucking out things like VS Community which is free for non profit use (schools and Open Source). Theyve also brought in programs like bizspark and they had or have dreamspark I think both of which are designed to help small companies and students respectively. I bet they have reduced the number of pirated copies of their software by such a simple example.

@brettmoan I get what you're saying. My point is the act of pirating. If I download a copy of a movie I already own, I'm still getting that copy from someone who wasn't legally entitled to distribute it. And unless I set up my client to not seed, I'm then still illegally distributing said content.

@burtybob I actually brought up the school thing. And yeah, they should be commended for the work they've put in for making their software and services easily available to students without it being a financial burden.

A lot of companies could learn from their example and build brand loyalty from that.