Sometimes It's OK To Steal My Games 438
spidweb writes "One Indie developer has written a nuanced article on a how software piracy affects him, approaching the issue from the opposite direction. He lists the ways in which the widespread piracy of PC games helps him. From the article: 'You don't get everything you want in this world. You can get piles of cool stuff for free. Or you can be an honorable, ethical being. You don't get both. Most of the time. Because, when I'm being honest with myself, which happens sometimes, I have to admit that piracy is not an absolute evil. That I do get things out of it, even when I'm the one being ripped off.' The article also tries to find a middle ground between the Piracy-Is-Always-Bad and Piracy-Is-Just-Fine sides of the argument that might enable single-player PC games to continue to exist."
Re:Sounds like some kind of liberal! (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, you have that backwards friend.
The Constitution explicitly denies the federal government any powers that weren't granted to it explicitly by the Constitution itself, and reserved them to the states individually.
It's PEOPLE who have allowed the federal government to slowly, and carefully usurp those powers. The CONSTITUTION forbade it, in the form of the 9th amendment.
Re:Exactly. (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, how about the Humble Indie Bundle then? They made over a million dollars in a month, with basically no advertising other than word of mouth (which turned into news coverage), despite the fact that the games have no DRM and were--and still are--easily pirated.
Not all Linux is GNU/Linux (Score:3, Informative)
You get piles of stuff for free with any [Linux] distro
True, any GNU/Linux distribution distro either comes with a free repository set up or lets the user adds free repository. But not all Linux is GNU/Linux; embedded Linux tends to be less open. For example, the TiVo DVR runs a Linux kernel, but it's much more like a video game console because it verifies the digital signature of every piece of software from the bootloader on up.
Re:Actually.. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.centos.org [centos.org]
The distro you refer to also has their own totally free Linux distro/repository, which you also may have heard of...
http://fedoraproject.org/ [fedoraproject.org]
The business model of your example is not simply repository access. What you're paying for with their "main distribution" is easier access to support and updates/patches.
Re:Your morals are not my morals (Score:3, Informative)
just that they should be able to expect to be paid by people who use their products
I don't think that's very reasonable.
First, copyright does not include a right to 'use.' Making more copies, distributing copies, etc., sure, but not mere use.
Second, just as mere use isn't protected, there are plenty of exceptions that dash your supposed expectation. First Sale, for example, allows people to resell copies without paying authors, and usually permits rental and lending as well, without royalties or other payments.
Authors may have a reasonable expectation of payment when they are one of the parties to a transaction, but for transactions in which they are not personally involved, they can expect nothing other than what society, acting in its own interests through a democratic government, deigns to give them.
Re:Actually.. (Score:3, Informative)
They will give you the source, you just need to compile it. Still free though.
Re:Your morals are not my morals (Score:5, Informative)
>> "Additionally, in a free market, I am allowed to make copies of something I buy, and to
>> sell those copies at the price of my choosing."
>
> That is a desire, not a reality.
Nope. That is reality.
The free market is distorted. Copyright is an artificial monopoly created by the
government based on the idea that this distortion of the market will lead to some
greater public good.
Copyright is active interference in the free market.
If copyright were less distorted, older works would be legal to trade on BT and that
would further dilute the value of new works.
Re:Piracy squeezes the middle hardest (Score:5, Informative)
You'd be surprised.
We put an app out on the app store. We saw 1600 pirated copies that weekend. We know because that's how many more submitted scores to the scoreboard than we had in sales.
1600 people went out and pirated a 2 dollar game the weekend it was released. That was pretty surprising.
We made it free for a weekend, and 25,000 people grabbed it.
But at 99 cents it pulls in maybe 2 to 5 dozen sales a week.
Indie doesn't matter if people have easy access to it for free.
Re:Actually.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It's not stealing. (Score:3, Informative)
The music industry would have us believe they are the verge of bankruptcy, but that is simply not true. The record sales have gone down during the last decade, but that is more than offset by the increase in legally downloaded music and the increased revenues from collection agencies like ASCAP. As a whole, the music industry is making more money than ever
Care to share any evidence for that? I have never seen anyone else suggest that downloads have made up for the CD sales slump, and I don't think ASCAP bridges the gap either.
$695 per year (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Happy god (Score:1, Informative)
Damien (tepples) is autistic. 'Literally' is the only way he can process words.