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Piracy
Jun 17, 2012 16:51:23 GMT -5
Post by Dashe on Jun 17, 2012 16:51:23 GMT -5
Dashe dear. The fact that MOTHER3 is not out in English is not a problem on the developer-side. They make the games but it's not their choice if the games makes it to the English market. They also aren't responsible for the release itself. They're just making the games. Err, right. Meant to say distributors there. Point is, in MOTHER 3's case, someone in the pipeline didn't do their job to get that particular game translated for potential customers who didn't speak Japanese, so it's their own fault the western audience really can't do much to get it outside of pirating a ROM and running the patch. And what an informative first post you've made! It really opens up the discussion to anybody who wasn't reading the MOTB thread in which this started.
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Devillock
Zakobon
Official MMLEx Modeler
The lights on the walls will start flashing soon...
Posts: 108
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Piracy
Jun 17, 2012 18:28:29 GMT -5
Post by Devillock on Jun 17, 2012 18:28:29 GMT -5
I'd like to take a look at the concept of Digital and Internet Piracy, since that's the one we're talking about, we're not addressing real piracy (Crime on Sea). Simply speaking, if you have purchased something, you're not allowed to replicate it and distribute and/or have copies of them. This apparently extends to not being able to make your own copies for redundancy, which I find illogical. An example would be: I buy a digital recipe book and I can't send a copy to my mother who might try out certain recipes, however even the most loyal anti-piracy lobbyists and activists would send a copy to their mother, family comes 1st, of course you're gonna send that to your mother. The moral issue (since legally we've already committed a crime) extends if you wanna send it to: - Your girlfriend (no legal or blood bounds there), - Your distant relatives, - Your best friends and neighbors (no legal or blood bounds there). Somewhat of a crude example, I admit, and this is an example for digital piracy, not Internet piracy. Internet piracy extends if you've purchased the same digital recipe book and posted it on-line for everyone to grab. Living in a country with (in the past) zero availability of multimedia material, no internet and no familiarity with the concept and practices of digital/internet piracy, my dad bought me a PSX console off his friend (who apparently put a MOD chip in it). There were three games with it. I passed them and went to buy me some more. I got Crash Bandicoot for a price of 3.07$/2.43€. There was a lovely print in the front and on the back, the print on the CD was interesting, and it was only three bucks. Ages passed and I filled my collection of PSX games up until a point where I got NFS High Stakes as a present. The disk had a black bottom, it had a huge booklet in it, it was scratch-resistant, and it ran perfectly, unlike the others who had issues running. The one who gave it to me was familiar with the concept of piracy when he noted the game was NTSC and I owned a PAL console. He said only modded consoles can run it, I said I had NTSC games (the ones who pirated it printed such booklets) and ran I the game just fine. I was then introduced with the fact of original copies and their cost. For a local standard, 3$ is quite affordable, but 50$ for a monthly payment of less than 200$ is next to impossible. After PSX games came PC games and PC software. Big shops selling downloaded software (back then we all had dial-up). When the fast internet came along, the choice of 'Buy the pirated CD' or 'Download it from the Web' was definitely clear. There were NO shops who offered legit software, there were NO shops who offered legit games. The government institutions ran pirated XP machines up until the point when Microsoft opened an office and the piracy awareness became to rise. Being used to piracy, now a large portion of them use UNIX based operating systems (which is most definitely a better & safer option for them). The big blockbuster movies do NOT come to the cinemas, the cool TV shows are NOT broadcasted on TV, the music I like can't be found in CD shops. When the movies and TV shows come out to DVD, I can't buy them in ANY store. The only thing that can be found is MTV hits, local musical hits and 3-4 pieces of software. Couple of operating systems and anti-virus programs. Well why don't you buy them from the internet? Internet shopping became possible only 4 years ago. Before that a bunch of moronic script kiddies snatched a couple of credit cards off an IRC channel and ordered literally thousands of nonsense for them. This became quite clear and the entire country was banned from the major online shops (who actually deliver here, most don't). Through back channels and partnerships of local banks with remote ones, that was cleared and we could order. Issues? Yes, so far the ONLY major store that delivers here is Amazon. eBay is just a front-end for other minor shops who don't even bother delivering. Another problem is that 95% of the things you can purchase on eBay are from private users who don't take credit cards, they take PayPal. Well what's the problem then? No PayPal in my country. There are tons of books that I would like to purchase and I can't get any of them, because nobody delivers. The ones who actually deliver? I bought a music CD which costs 12$, the customs fee was 15€ for anything less than two pounds (1kg) and shipping fee of 5$. I don't have an issue with the shipping fee, it was sent from Texas half around the world, but customs is a mess, tons of 'em actually went to jail (including a neighbor's son). Games, movies and TV shows, books and other are literally a work of art, video games being my top choice, combined of beautiful visuals, lovely soundtracks and lovely stories which become better and better every day. I've given my best to support the developers I respect and some unknown ones by purchasing major titles and indie games. Digital purchases have made things somewhat easier, but the US standard of pricing is still quite bigger than mine, and it's impossible to throw a quarter of one's monthly payment in order to purchase a Video game which I did. The 1st Megaman Legends copy I got was a pirated NTSC edition (I have it framed ). I'd like to mention an advertisement I saw on piracy. A guy's standing on the street and goes: Sir, you could grab two movies for free, but there's a catch, this woman loses her job. In my place it's significantly different. I'd ask the woman: Would you like for me to watch your movie for free or not watch it at all? It's not gonna be in the Cinemas and it's not gonna be purchasable in CD shops. With digital cinemas (pay to watch) this logic doesn't hold its ground, but a few years back when the ad came out, it did. I am not an advocate of piracy, I'm forced to use it. If movies came to town, I'd be the 1st to go see 'em (I grew up in the local cinema, it's 100 feet away from my home). If the TV shows broadcasted on TV, I'd watch 'em, and again if their DVDs came to town. I'd purchase games and enjoy the full experience, multi player included if I could afford it. The entire place is built on piracy and that's just the way it is. The only thing I support to be pirated is educational material. Thanks to Confucius we have the educational system, he was the main advocate that everyone should have an education while in Europe reading was a thing of the elites. Knowledge ought to be free! I know that most of the educators need a buck for their work, it is my dream to teach someday, but I'd rather teach and live off donations than to be employed in a 'private school' and pay where the institution charges serious money for something I consider to be holy and beyond the concept of value.
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Piracy
Jun 17, 2012 20:02:10 GMT -5
Post by Pitch on Jun 17, 2012 20:02:10 GMT -5
Whether piracy is technically morally right or wrong, I think Devillock is exempt from any guilt. Since the topic in question was about Misadventures of Tron Bonne, I'd like to point out a few things about the MegaMan Legends series. - Capcom US cannot legally sell the MegaMan Legends games. They don't have the rights to the full content of the game. Furthermore, they weren't interested in acquiring the necessary rights or removing the offending materials from the games to allow a re-release. (Or at least they have no intention of doing so any time soon.)
- Likewise, it's impossible for Capcom to give piracy the go-ahead, because they don't actually own the game. Not that they would; I'm just saying, copyright law cuts both ways in this case. We still can't steal it, but its creator can't sell it. :06:
- The only places to buy MegaMan Legends games right now are sites like eBay and Amazon, in which case, it's re-sale. They're not stocked by Capcom. Capcom doesn't get any of the money. It's pure profit for the vendors. So, really, the developers aren't getting any money whether you purchase the game or pirate it.
SPOILER; I think the only exception right now is the PSP ports in Japan. Those might still be in distribution, earning money for Capcom. But there's still no dev-friendly way to purchase the English version. Or Misadventures for that matter.
Maybe if you want to support the developers, you can look up their contact info and send them the money directly..
There's no moral obligation to purchase software if purchasing it won't support the company that produced it. (And there should be no legal obligation.) If something reproducible (something that can be copied) is no longer being sold by its creator, why should there be any guilt for copying it, instead of trying to buy it off someone else? It shouldn't make any difference. These kinds of issues are the reason copyright law exists separately from actual property law. It's not comparable to a tangible product, like a ring. As soon as Capcom makes the games available, all of the above is void, of course. But until then, it's basically abandonware.
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Piracy
Jun 17, 2012 20:19:07 GMT -5
Post by HF on Jun 17, 2012 20:19:07 GMT -5
@ Pitch: Technically, piracy is piracy; it doesn't matter what the method, causes, or intentions are.
Calling someone out on such an act, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. I believe making the judgement call on this is to be done on a by-case basis.
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Piracy
Jun 17, 2012 20:23:55 GMT -5
Post by Pitch on Jun 17, 2012 20:23:55 GMT -5
@hf I never said it wasn't piracy. o__o;
My post was talking about whether or not piracy is morally wrong in the case of MegaMan Legends games. It's definitely still illegal. But there's currently no legal alternative that supports the company. (i.e., The legal alternative to pirating MegaMan Legends is to pay obscene amounts of money for a copy at re-sale, none of which Capcom will ever see.)
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Piracy
Jun 17, 2012 20:43:52 GMT -5
Post by HF on Jun 17, 2012 20:43:52 GMT -5
@ Pitch: Well, okay. My bad.
Either way, it's a paradox isn't it. The only way to support Capcom is to support their other games, even if said 'support' guarantees nothing for one of its series but would likely support expansion for the games' series supported. On the other hand, not buying their games and instead calling them out for questionable business practices* just makes you part of their problem, which is the supposed opposite of what both sides should want.
* Whether the infamy gained from its on-disc DLC practices is justified or not, I am not going to elaborate on this further due to being out of the scope of this discussion.
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Devillock
Zakobon
Official MMLEx Modeler
The lights on the walls will start flashing soon...
Posts: 108
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Piracy
Jun 18, 2012 4:41:30 GMT -5
Post by Devillock on Jun 18, 2012 4:41:30 GMT -5
You live in the wrong kind of country and expect that to be a legal excuse to download stuff and be proud of it? The place may suck, I agree, we're workin' on it; Nobody mentioned pride whilst downloading pirated software; I think you're not seeing this from my perspective. Piracy is crime, because you steal. Just because something is up on the internet doesn't mean it is free. Imagine that you make a hand-crafted ring and someone just flat-out goes up to you, grabs it out of your hand and you'll never see it again. Unfortunately for your argument, you got this one wrong since digital/internet piracy doesn't work that way. You can't steal a copy since the original is already in the possession of the one who posted it online. Stealing implies for you to walk into my house and remove something without my permission. Files are posted online by the sole will of the users. To relate to an example like the one you pulled of with the ring; It's like Jesus with the loaves and the fishes. Please take note that a lot of game studios don't have much of a problem with piracy at all. Valve is a prime example. The studio that has shown the greatest resistance to piracy is Ubisoft by implementing all sorts of copy protection and DRM systems on their products. A workaround for them is to release titles for consoles first and afterwards for the PC. As for music, some musicians are even secretly encouraging users to grab their music from the pirate networks. Why? A lot of record houses grab a huge percentage of the CD/MP3 sales, the musicians themselves don't get a big cut (You get only 5% if you wanna sell your song on iTunes) and they earn by performing live shows, so to them it's kinda all the same. As for movies, Hollywood studios hurt movie-makers more than piracy does. You're not stirring up trouble, it's a simple discussion, we're just sharing opinions. Weather we agree on something or not, we're still going to respect the rules of the forum on piracy and it explicitly says mentioning them is fine, but providing links on the forums to sites which promote illegal activities, or instructions on how to do something illegal, is not .
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Piracy
Jun 18, 2012 17:57:57 GMT -5
Post by Bean on Jun 18, 2012 17:57:57 GMT -5
I try to generally at least own the games that I do video playthroughs of, but I can't say that's always been the case. Mega Man V is $75 used right now thanks to it being out of print and never remade. That's more than I'd like to spend on Legends 2, let alone a Game Boy game, albeit a great one. I wished they would have made that compilation set for the GBA like they did with the first eight console games with the Anniversary Collection, but they canned it.
I also did the original Kirby's Dream Land, but I didn't own it at the time. Now that Nintendo's releasing that Kirby 20th Anniversary disc, I'm going to purchase it to have a physical copy on hand of a lot of Kirby games I missed out on.
I mean, I get what you're saying, but I do try to give companies my money before looking online for an easier option. Still, even when I'm doing a playthrough, I'll use an emulator because it's just easier for me to work with. Does that make it right? I think it's okay if you own the game, but others might not.
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Piracy
Jun 18, 2012 18:53:10 GMT -5
Post by HF on Jun 18, 2012 18:53:10 GMT -5
I mean, I get what you're saying, but I do try to give companies my money before looking online for an easier option. Still, even when I'm doing a playthrough, I'll use an emulator because it's just easier for me to work with. Does that make it right? I think it's okay if you own the game, but others might not. As far as I understand, "Copyright" is quite literally "the right to copy"; someone who bought software owns only the copy distributed and purchased, but not the source code behind it. Unless the bought software in question is paid for the cost of the data medium (FD/CD/MD/DVD/BD/HDD/SSD/etc) itself (therefore making the software either Open Source, shareware, sample, or a demo), the consumer has no legal right to make copies for any reason whatsoever.
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Piracy
Jun 18, 2012 21:18:28 GMT -5
Post by Loken on Jun 18, 2012 21:18:28 GMT -5
I agree with HF that this should be a case by case decision. Honestly, MoTB has been out for more than 10 years and besides super expensive resale there is no way to get the game. Legally it's not lawful but in this specific case piracy is harming NO ONE so it's not a moral problem. I'm sure that Capcom, the other MoTB rights holders, the US government, and divine providence don't care at all. You can't be entirely black and white about such things. Edit: I like that Devil lock said "Make a thread called 'piracy'" and Truner made a thread called 'piracy'. I don't know it has a funny civility about it. also I'm dumb.
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Piracy
Jun 20, 2012 1:03:05 GMT -5
Post by blayze16 on Jun 20, 2012 1:03:05 GMT -5
I guess it depends on what country you live in and the exchange rate of the local currency to dollars.
DDR II (a wii game) sold in the US for I think $30. When I found it on the "honest" (genuine USA region games) video game store, they are charging 2500 php (roughly $60). The stinker that was the PS3 version of 2010's DDR game (50 ~2min songs on a blu-ray. Licenses are composed of retro, rock, ballad songs plus Bad Romance) sold for 3500 php (a little more than $85).
1000 php to us is very big money already. And then you hear about those $10-$15 pirated and bootleg games. I'm sure some have no qualms about buying pirated games, but for those that have to resort, it's usually the high cost of games. And its usually no wonder that unless you know where you are buying, game consoles are also pre-modded (my wii is not modded, btw) to accommodate for these cheap games.
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Piracy
Jun 20, 2012 4:56:48 GMT -5
Post by HF on Jun 20, 2012 4:56:48 GMT -5
I guess it depends on what country you live in and the exchange rate of the local currency to dollars. DDR II (a wii game) sold in the US for I think $30. When I found it on the "honest" (genuine USA region games) video game store, they are charging 2500 php (roughly $60). The stinker that was the PS3 version of 2010's DDR game (50 ~2min songs on a blu-ray. Licenses are composed of retro, rock, ballad songs plus Bad Romance) sold for 3500 php (a little more than $85). Which is one of the benefits Digital Distribution brings; in the case of PSN, you can have access to region-specific games just by having a PSN account for the specific region (e.g. US/JP/ASIA). This not only enforces the price parity you seem to be demanding, it also allows much higher accessibility for titles not normally available locally.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Piracy
Jun 21, 2012 14:26:31 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2012 14:26:31 GMT -5
Well, piracy is a crime since if many people were to just download the game instead of buying it; the company that had produced it would lose money. Since a lot of companies do seem to judge how well a series does by how units were sold, it would hurt the series if it's sold quite badly; even though the game happens to be of the top downloaded games of all time.
I know that there's more to this matter than it being simply black/ white, but it mainly hurts the video game industry.
That's my two cents.
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Piracy
Jun 21, 2012 15:53:33 GMT -5
Post by Loken on Jun 21, 2012 15:53:33 GMT -5
I completely agree Steffie. It's very wrong to steal new games that you can still buy and support the developer, but MoTB has been out for a while and Capcom can't even make money on it. So if you can't buy it new it's probably not that bad if you steal it. I'm too stupid to figure how to torrent things anyway.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Piracy
Jun 23, 2012 12:48:39 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Jun 23, 2012 12:48:39 GMT -5
Loken: That's true, which is why I had mentioned that I know that piracy isn't exactly black and white.
It would've if CAPCOM had sorted out the license issues and rerelease the games.
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