Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

Well, trolling or not, go on and finish the other part; explain how it works in your ideal world where all the companies that exist on the basis of their IP alone don't exist. IBM, Microsoft, Adobe, Blizzard, Arm, nvidia, Qt, blah blah 50 pages more blah.

Also we have to remove companies that would be out of business if anyone felt free to copy their products and sell them. Let's start with Nokia...

:D

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

For Music I've actually switched to Pandora Radio. It's simply easier.. and it's free :). I haven't bought a CD in a *long* time.

Unfortunately... there is no alternative to movies. I like movies.. and nobody can make me feel guilty that I have some movies on my hard drive of my computer that I stream to my TV over an HDMI cable (using Ubuntu, I might add).

First off... I have bought copies of the vast majority of them.. secondly... I've spent so much damn money on movies over the years that I simply won't feel bad if I happen to have a few that may have found there way on there from elsewhere. I have hundreds if not thousands of DVD's, same for VHS, and am just now (since I was only just recently able to afford) have started building my Blu-Ray collection.

Blu-ray gives me pause when I buy it though... because of the pathetic DRM on it. Getting me a copy of my Blu-Ray onto my computer is a much bigger PITA than my DVD's :(. Blu-ray's, DVD's, etc all scratch and break. I simply prefer watching something that isn't going to totally break on me.. requiring that I once again have to pay to get something I already had because it was built in such cheap quality.

But.. philosophically.. I stand at ends of the *AA (MPAA specifically here). They get my money only because there is no alternative free way to do it like Pandora Radio.. (although: Netflix comes close. It's not free but I'm not paying individually per movie either. Streaming Netflix to my TV would be all I need if the Insta-queue had more movies for it.)

ETA: This also happened with software for me. I used to use windows.. and yes I'll admit I used Pirated software because as a teen I couldn't afford the expensive stuff. Does that mean the developers time wasn't worth it? No.. but I couldn't afford it.. and since it was out there I didn't make myself suffer just to feel not-guilty at night. Since I've switched to Linux things are significantly better.. I don't use any pirated software - because I can completely avoid using any pay software. I don't buy anything off of Google Market for my Android either.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

Well I don't buy nor play games.
And as for DVD, this is another topic, but not much different.

Well, as long as open source software does exist, I wonder wether retail software industry is really necessary and desirable.

Well, I've earned quite a lot of money as software engineer in an investment bank and now I live on stock markets. But this is digression, personal life of people should not be used in a debate.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

@HumanPenguin: I guess I'm an optimist :P
It also pose the question of how many open source users are here becauses they're 'misguided' or they misunderstood things...

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

People that honestly see nothign wrong with stealing software is the very reason why the PC game industry is in a massive recline right now. There is no justifying it. It's that simple. Everything else on the matter is just conjecture and horn blowing.

2d

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

I doubt it would be the end of the world.

Also, since you mention Nokia, please notice that this firm has made a huge step towards open source.

As far as i'm concerned, I had no smartphone but as soon as I heard about the N900 with a version of debian inside, I immediately went to a store and bought it cash.

So my guess is that Nokia has made quite some money with this open source software.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

I tried the donation route Fatal on an app that had 300,000 downloads. I ended up with about 50 donations. But I received THOUSANDS of emails telling me exactly what they thought was wrong/new features/general *****ing. I tried to support them as best I could but when I started getting death threats against myself and my family when I didn't give them the answer they wanted (no I am not making this up) I made the app paid (still leaving a cut down version for free). At least that way If I was going to have to deal with *******s I would be making a small amount from it.
The whole experience of that and a number of the responses here have left me with very much a feeling of FARK USERS, and an urge to write software purely for myself only.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

And yet WoW for Blizzard and Eve Online are available to install via a free download.. and you just pay a monthly subscription for services rendered. Which you can cancel at any time.. and in the case of WoW play on a free WoW Server if you want.

Savage II and Planeshift are less well-known MMORPG's because they don't spend as much into advertising but are both free.

*shrug*

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

The idea behind copyright is so that it benefits the society by spurring innovation. That was the initial idea behind patents and such.

It's not about making profits! Never was! The problem until recently was that the only way to ensure innovation was to ensure profits. Nowadays that's no longer true, as one can see the vast amount of FOSS and CreativeCommons stuff being produced.

So if your interest in copyright lies solely on making profits, then you're doing it wrong! ;)

Just wait some years until replication technology matures, and there's a RepRap in every home! :)

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

So all paid software should be pay by month based - hell thats fine with me.