What's your limit on piracy?

[mrat93]

I've noticed a lot of discussion on piracy on MR lately, and I wanted to get a general idea on how much people pirate different types of media. Because there are so many different types of media, it's not very easy to measure 'how much' you pirate, here's a little scale.

10 - I download everything illegally. Software, , operating systems, games, apps, music, movies, you name it!

8 - Mostly all of my media has been downloaded illegally. I rarely, if ever, pay for music, movies, software, etc.

6 - More than half of my media is pirated. I only buy media if I feel the artist, developer, whomever really deserves X amount of money for what I am buying.

4 - I try to pay for most of my music and movies and other low-cost things, but software packages in the 100s of dollars are a little too much to pay for.

2 - I rarely pirate media. I do a lot of trying before buying and give credit where it's due.

1 - Piracy is never justified. NO EXCEPTIONS.

By this scale, I say I am a 7. I try before I buy all of my apps. Except for LogMeIn. I had a cracked version for a while then bought it when it was on sale for $20. I also pirate 95% of computer software, especially when it comes to things like Angry Birds for Mac. It's the exact same game but for $4 more. Maybe worth $1 extra but no more. I pirate 99.9% of my music, butI also don't listen to 99% of my music, so I wouldn't consider it to be THAT much money lost to artists. I just find it more convenient to download full albums as opposed to individual songs. For movies, unless they're bluray, I always download them. Faster and easier than going to a store. And of course, I download ROMs for whatever I can for older systems which are no longer sold anyway.

 

[ace198]

6 or 7 most likely. I only buy from artists I love. I download all music except for two artists. I bought all of the albums for those two.

 

[glossywhite]

I don't agree with piracy - it was/is a terrible thing! To attack ships, steal, rape and murder is AWFUL. Copying binary streams, however? Meh - who cares.

 

[shstiger2009]

Probably a 6/7 for me...I have 300 songs in my iTunes account and I've bought about 10 of them. Software? When it's in the 100's of dollars vs paying 0...well, I just can't justify spending that money. I do buy things that are in the $20-40 range however, because it's not breaking the bank buying things worth this amount of money from time to time.

 

[Mexbearpig]

Music, I don't often download. But when I do, I usually pirate it. Unless I want it right then. In which case I don't mind paying a dollar.

Movies, I only watch online. Never download. That's where i draw the line.

Software/apps-If I am jail broken, yes. But Im not right now. And

 

[Rodimus Prime]

for me the line tends to be for high end software like Adobe PDF. My reason for that is often times I just need a basic PDF writer that allows me to do minor edits or appending/removing pages in the middle of a PDF.
I have not put a PDF writer on my laptop but my desktop has one because I needed it to fill out an application so it was easier to read. Other wise I would not of gotten it. It is not like I am doing any real work with it.

I used to pirate my music but not I tend to buy it because it is easier to pay the few bucks for it than to go hunting for it. Movies the one that I pirate are not ones I would ever pay money for any how. Normally it is some limited thing that I want to see out of it. I have a fairly large DVD library of DVD that i have bought.

Hell my desktop has Quicktime pro on it just to shut up apples stupid do you want to upgrade pop ups.

 

[ucfgrad93]

I don't pirate. To me it is just stealing.

 

[glossywhite]

I don't pirate. To me it is just stealing.

LOL "stealing". I'll have to explain binary to you sometime

 

[Xavier]

By your scale, I am a 4.

 

[ucfgrad93]

LOL "stealing". I'll have to explain binary to you sometime

I'll pass on your explanation.

 

[turtle777]

I'm a 2.5

I often "test-pirate" software for a while, and then purchase it if I continue using it.

Far too often I have purchased software just to find after a few weeks that it doesn't suit my needs. Waste of money.

-t

 

[Tailpike1153]

I'm a about a 1.5. But I've gotten lots of gifts.

 

[Apple OC]

I miss poor little Napster ... have not downloaded since

 

[Theclamshell]

Is modifying trials to make them fulls pirating?

 

[CaoCao]

Is cracking a PC game when you own the xbox360 version and make it run on OS X piracy?

 

[mrat93]

Is cracking a PC game when you own the xbox360 version and make it run on OS X piracy?

Legally, yes. However, I see no reason why you should have to pay for the exact same game twice.

 

[Abstract]

LOL "stealing". I'll have to explain binary to you sometime

Then I'm a 10. By "10", I mean I'm a 2.



Ok ok, I'm a 7. I download music all the time, but I purchase the albums I really like/want. Despite being a 7 on your scale, I don't really feel bad about it.

Is it illegal to download music the way I do?? Yes.
Does illegal downloading lead me to purchase more music than I would have if I hadn't pirated first and put the albums on my iPhone to "try"? Actually, yes.

I do commit a crime when I download illegally, but realistlcally, the music industry wins when I download illegally. It's the music equivalent of a "test-drive", and trust me, they're far more likely to sell me an album if I'm allowed a test-drive. I purchase around 30 albums per year. There are people out there who purchase far more albums than me, but I still purchase far more music than anybody else I know. I also pirate more music than anybody I know....maybe 5-10 albums per month.



With regards to software, I'm a 2. I purchase software. I use a pirated version of Office and Adobe Lightroom, but I have paid for all my other software.

 

[Dmac77]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

I'm probably a 9. I honesty don't remember the last time I legally bought music. Out of the 5,600 songs in my iTunes library I probably bought about 200 of them.

I make a copy of every movie I get through Netflix. I feel as if the damn studios make enough already and I already pay $25 a month for Netflix, so screw the law.

As for software I pirate that too. The only software I buy legally are operating systems and antivirus for my windows machines.

I honestly couldn't care less if people think I'm a bad person for pirating stuff. My personal opinion regarding those people are get off your damn pedestal and as my grandma always says "shove it where the sun doesn't shine."

-Don

 

[0007776]

I'm probably around a 5 if I have money I will usually buy something, but I don't have a lot of extra money so things do get pirated. As far as music and movies go I don't like to pay, but I'm happy with watching or listening to an add supported streaming version if it's available. If it's not I pirate it.

 

[rdowns]

Always love to read how and why people justify their pirating.

 

[glossywhite]

Always love to read how and why people justify their pirating.

Funny eh?

 

[maflynn]

I don't pirate, taking something that I don't have a right to is stealing. Not matter how much people try justify their actions. Stealing is stealing.

 

[Lone Deranger]

I'd like to hear from those in this thread that have little or no problems with piracy how they would feel about taking a significant pay cut. Or having thousands of individuals siphoning money out of their bank accounts just because they can. Would you be okay with that?

 

[416049]

4-5

i have only pirated the adobe suite and a couple of albums nothing else but for a highschool student the adobe suite here in denmark is not affordable

 

[0098386]

Legally, yes. However, I see no reason why you should have to pay for the exact same game twice.

It's not the same thing; you don't buy a game, you buy a license to run that copy of it on the console you decided to buy it for. It costs more than nothing to port a game, and it costs a lot more for an additional development team to do the porting.

I'd like to hear from those in this thread that have little or no problems with piracy how they would feel about taking a significant pay cut. Or having thousands of individuals siphoning money out of their bank accounts just because they can. Would you be okay with that?

Course they wouldn't.
And of course we should expect some upcoming reply about piracy doesn't impact software.
(I worked on a software title (PC+PS3) a year ago. Once the PC version was cracked the sales dropped through the floor, recently a hack was released for the PS3 and guess what happened to our software sales?)