• The morality of pirating
    219 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Robbobin;29307253]Fair point. So if the morality of [b]lying[/b] is context dependent, why not piracy? [editline]20th April 2011[/editline] If I truthfully wanted to know if I was fat, I would want the truth, tbh.[/QUOTE] Touché It seems we are at an impasse, although the fact that we both accept piracy to be wrong renders the argument useless except for intellectual purposes.
I don't understand why people have to justify their piracy with all these different reasons. Just be honest and admit that you pirate because you know you can get something you want for free with little risk of getting caught. I'm excluding already purchased games from this argument.
[QUOTE=lulzbocksV2;29307639]Touché It seems we are at an impasse, although the fact that we both accept piracy to be wrong renders the argument useless except for intellectual purposes.[/QUOTE] Actually I don't think piracy is wrong :wink: I think in the long run it's a good thing piracy happens, assuming that eventually corporations will stop resisting post-scarcity.
[QUOTE=Robbobin;29307805]Actually I don't think piracy is wrong :wink: I think in the long run it's a good thing piracy happens, assuming that eventually corporations will stop resisting post-scarcity.[/QUOTE] They won't stop trying to stop piracy though. It will increase the more people pirate.
[QUOTE=lulzbocksV2;29307838]They won't stop trying to stop piracy though. It will increase the more people pirate.[/QUOTE] what they're trying to do [i]now[/i] is stop piracy. Copyright, lawsuits, DRM (that ultimately always fail), they're all part of a resistance against piracy. Rather than resisting it, they should look into ways where they can take the good of piracy (inexpensive, convenient, easy) and apply it to their own methods. If they're so bent on getting profit they should at least [i]tap into the piracy market[/i] rather than pouring money into copy-protection that doesn't even work.
[QUOTE=Robbobin;29308009]what they're trying to do [i]now[/i] is stop piracy. Copyright, lawsuits, DRM (that ultimately always fail), they're all part of a resistance against piracy. Rather than resisting it, they should look into ways where they can take the good of piracy (inexpensive, convenient, easy) and apply it to their own methods. If they're so bent on getting profit they should at least [i]tap into the piracy market[/i] rather than pouring money into copy-protection that doesn't even work.[/QUOTE] Describe how a company would tap into the piracy market.
Pirating a game/film is like stealing from a super market Pirating music is like stealing from a corner store. Some people believe that stealing from super markets isn't [i]Immoral[/i] per say, especially when those companies mistreat there employees etc. Personally, I don't fully identify with this belief but i'll say I'd sooner steal from a super market than a corner store. just food for thought
[QUOTE=Pepin;29308273]Describe how a company would tap into the piracy market.[/QUOTE] Distribution via torrents? [editline]19th April 2011[/editline] Also, I always thought philosophy was a soft option, but you guys sure proved me wrong
TBH, I don't really give a shit about piracy.
I mean, you guys duking it out was probably the most refined debate I've seen on the internet Holy crap, slowpunch
[QUOTE=Pepin;29307664]I don't understand why people have to justify their piracy with all these different reasons. Just be honest and admit that you pirate because you know you can get something you want for free with little risk of getting caught. I'm excluding already purchased games from this argument.[/QUOTE] Get banned for admitting to warez :v:
Why do mods still ban for warez? It's not anything morally wrong and Facepunch doesn't exactly follow real world laws as far as anonymous pirating goes, so I don't understand why you would get banned for it? I've never pirated, but I don't find anything wrong with it. Well, that's not true, if a game is made by a greedy company, (i.e. Activision) I won't feel bad if I pirate a game with an unrighteous $60 price tag. Then again, if I were to pirate Garry's Mod (well, way back when he was just starting out, now it doesn't really matter), I would be stealing from a developer who wasn't greedy and was just starting out trying to earn money on his game he worked hard on.
I pirate games to test them and to see how they run on my hardware. If I like them, I buy em, if I don't like em, I don't buy em.
[QUOTE=Eeshton;29309273]Well, that's not true, if a game is made by a greedy company, (i.e. Activision) I won't feel bad if I pirate a game with an unrighteous $60 price tag. Then again, if I were to pirate Garry's Mod (well, way back when he was just starting out, now it doesn't really matter), I would be stealing from a developer who wasn't greedy and was just starting out trying to earn money on his game he worked hard on.[/QUOTE] You do realize that the developers are the ones who lose out when sales go down, right? It's not as if Kotick is personally making the games himself.
[QUOTE=Robbobin;29308009]what they're trying to do [i]now[/i] is stop piracy. Copyright, lawsuits, DRM (that ultimately always fail), they're all part of a resistance against piracy. Rather than resisting it, they should look into ways where they can take the good of piracy (inexpensive, convenient, easy) and apply it to their own methods. If they're so bent on getting profit they should at least [i]tap into the piracy market[/i] rather than pouring money into copy-protection that doesn't even work.[/QUOTE] You entirely misunderstand the purpose of DRM. The goal is never to completely prevent piracy, because this is an unrealistic goal. It's unattainable. The goal of DRM is to make an effort at preventing zero-day piracy, which is a situation where the game becomes available through illegitimate means before it's available through legit means. Basically, what they try to do when they design DRM is they want to make it so that you simply cannot get the game from any source other than the seller, at least until the day it is released or maybe even a few days after release. For each day after release that it remains uncracked and not-pirateable, the DRM pays for itself a few times over. The reason behind this is that they realize they sell video games to children. They also realize that children fucking suck and they're impatient as hell and will get the game from the source that can provide it the quickest. So they try and create a situation where the quickest and most convenient source is just buying the game. That way, all of these people who were actually planning to buy the game but may have opted to pirate it simply to get it sooner will be forced to buy if they want to play it as soon as possible.
I prefer to ninja my games.
[QUOTE=Pepin;29307664]I don't understand why people have to justify their piracy with all these different reasons. Just be honest and admit that you pirate because you know you can get something you want for free with little risk of getting caught.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=cqbcat;29310773]I prefer to ninja my games.[/QUOTE] I usually robot all of my music and games.
[QUOTE=Benf199105;29297070]Pirating cannot be moral for one reason. Kant, a famous more modern philosopher, suggested that if we were to accept certain moral codes of ethical judgements, there are certian things we have to imagine, things he called the 3 Maxims. These 3 Maxims make up the "Categorical Imperative." 1. The first premise is that a person acts morally if his or her conduct would, without condition, be the "right" conduct for any person in similar circumstances (the "First Maxim"). 2. The second premise is that conduct is "right" if it treats others as ends in themselves and not as means to an end (the "Second Maxim"). 3. The conclusion is that a person acts morally when he or she acts as if his or her conduct was establishing a universal law governing others in similar circumstances (the "Third Maxim"). In reference to number 3. ([B]"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."[/B]) So in this example, for pirating to be moral, we should be able to visualise a world where everyone pirates, because it would have to be Universal law (Maxim 3). Moreover, we would have to assume that pirating doesn't treat people as a means to our own benefit, i.e. that by pirating we don't exploit someone else for our own gain. And Pirating fulfills neither of these. And that isn't possible, because, without customers money, games, movies and music and such, wouldn't be developed and made, so pirating would be impossible. Furthermore, pirating can't be morally right because we would be exploiting the people that made the product, big or small. You can't say pirating is morally acceptable against big companies but not smaller, because it's logically inconsistent; you exploit the person who made the game, regardless if it was Notch or EA. And if you did only pirate from "big" companies; you'd never[U]get[/U] any big companies. As soon as the big company became big (by whatever measure you chose: wealth, turnover, profits, revenue etc) they would instantly have everything of theirs pirated and would go bankrupt. Thus pirating isn't logically moral.All in all. Read up on Morality and Ethics before you try this agin OP.[/QUOTE] By this logic, homosexuality and sexual abstinence are immoral.
So much hate :smith:
[QUOTE=Benf199105;29297070]Pirating cannot be moral for one reason. Kant, a famous more modern philosopher, suggested that if we were to accept certain moral codes of ethical judgements, there are certian things we have to imagine, things he called the 3 Maxims. These 3 Maxims make up the "Categorical Imperative." 1. The first premise is that a person acts morally if his or her conduct would, without condition, be the "right" conduct for any person in similar circumstances (the "First Maxim"). 2. The second premise is that conduct is "right" if it treats others as ends in themselves and not as means to an end (the "Second Maxim"). 3. The conclusion is that a person acts morally when he or she acts as if his or her conduct was establishing a universal law governing others in similar circumstances (the "Third Maxim"). In reference to number 3. ([B]"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."[/B]) So in this example, for pirating to be moral, we should be able to visualise a world where everyone pirates, because it would have to be Universal law (Maxim 3). Moreover, we would have to assume that pirating doesn't treat people as a means to our own benefit, i.e. that by pirating we don't exploit someone else for our own gain. And Pirating fulfills neither of these. And that isn't possible, because, without customers money, games, movies and music and such, wouldn't be developed and made, so pirating would be impossible. Furthermore, pirating can't be morally right because we would be exploiting the people that made the product, big or small. You can't say pirating is morally acceptable against big companies but not smaller, because it's logically inconsistent; you exploit the person who made the game, regardless if it was Notch or EA. And if you did only pirate from "big" companies; you'd never[U]get[/U] any big companies. As soon as the big company became big (by whatever measure you chose: wealth, turnover, profits, revenue etc) they would instantly have everything of theirs pirated and would go bankrupt. Thus pirating isn't logically moral.All in all. Read up on Morality and Ethics before you try this agin OP.[/QUOTE] I imagined Samuel L. Jackson giving this speech (because of your avatar) and it made it 100% more great
[QUOTE=Robbobin;29307172]I'd recommend not citing Kant, if you want to win a moral argument. Kantian ethics is basically slated by a huge majority of political theorists/moral philosophers. [i]A priori[/i] morality is fallacious because it presupposes morality is objective. Not that I'm denying it isn't objective... what I mean to say is that there is no way of falsifying the claim, so it is meaningless. And as a last resort, if you still decide to be committed to Kant, you must accept that: (In accordance to the third maxim) Everyone would will truth-telling to become a universal law, hence telling an axe-murderer where his quarry is, is a moral obligation (if he asked), despite the fact you know he's going to brutally murder them. Deotological ethics is so full of presuppositions I don't see how anyone can realistically pursue it.[/QUOTE] Meh. I wasn't trying to come across as a die hard Kantian, it was more of throwing a different idea into the thread, i.e. some real philosophy. And what do you mean [I]A priori[/I] supposes morality as it's objective? Do you mean like, having an [I]a priori[/I] morality, (i.e. one you gained without experience) is logically incorrect because it assumes that morality isn't subjective? i can't even work out what that means. Have i got that right? Because, if i gleaned that correctly; i'd agree here, you can't both suppose morality is subjective and objective, andf thus having [I]a prior[/I] moral codes doesn't work if you believe in a subjective moral code. And I agree with alot of the holes in deontology, gay rights and the axe murderer for example, but I would kind of call myself a kind of Kantian. I like the maxim's and I think they can go a long way to starting to find problems with policies or moral standpoints, but I don't think they should go ALL the way to deciding them. But like i said next time i just won't bother, i'll let the thread sit in bans for admitting warez and people flaming EA. Also axe murderer? Just tell him, the person's going to die anyway :P - I'm not a nihilist either :D [QUOTE=fenwick;29311046]By this logic, homosexuality and sexual abstinence are immoral.[/QUOTE] Well yeah. We can't logically wish everyone in the world were gay, and like Robbobin said earlier, deontology has alot of holes in it. But then again, i was just presenting a Kantian standpoint, since this thread is seemingly about morals, i thought people would be discussing morality and ethics. Utilitarianism = Piracy is moral, using basic hedonus calculus anyway, the utility gained from the pirated material would more than likely outweigh the utility lost to the company or developer (especially if the pirate never dreamed of purchasing the item first). Virtue ethics = probably wrong, they'd liken it to stealing i guess. [QUOTE=Hamsterjuice;29311899]I imagined Samuel L. Jackson giving this speech (because of your avatar) and it made it 100% more great[/QUOTE] Haha, yeah.
[QUOTE=Pepin;29308273]Describe how a company would tap into the piracy market.[/QUOTE] Spotify. Loads of people who would normally download the music illegally switched to spotify. Just one example. [editline]20th April 2011[/editline] [QUOTE=Greenen72;29308499]I mean, you guys duking it out was probably the most refined debate I've seen on the internet Holy crap, slowpunch[/QUOTE] It's a shame it revolved around the categorical imperative, something I think most of facepunch would hate if they understood it more. [editline]20th April 2011[/editline] [QUOTE=J Paul;29309956]You entirely misunderstand the purpose of DRM. The goal is never to completely prevent piracy, because this is an unrealistic goal. It's unattainable. The goal of DRM is to make an effort at preventing zero-day piracy, which is a situation where the game becomes available through illegitimate means before it's available through legit means. Basically, what they try to do when they design DRM is they want to make it so that you simply cannot get the game from any source other than the seller, at least until the day it is released or maybe even a few days after release. For each day after release that it remains uncracked and not-pirateable, the DRM pays for itself a few times over. The reason behind this is that they realize they sell video games to children. They also realize that children fucking suck and they're impatient as hell and will get the game from the source that can provide it the quickest. So they try and create a situation where the quickest and most convenient source is just buying the game. That way, all of these people who were actually planning to buy the game but may have opted to pirate it simply to get it sooner will be forced to buy if they want to play it as soon as possible.[/QUOTE] I see. Well frankly I'd say that's still shitty because they're pouring money into something that ultimately makes their product at best, no better (most people would agree it makes it worse). I don't think it really damages my point all that much, to be honest.
The only situations where I've pirated/attempted to pirate a game are with ones I can't get hold of in my local games shop. Example: Postal 2 and Fallout 2. Personally I don't thing there's anything wrong with pirating a game that you can't get hold of cos it's old or it never really got shipped to your area. However, anyone who pirates a Valve Game is completley WRONG. Why? Because Valve is a great developer who works hard to provide a great service to the gaming community, even going as far as to support fan made games using their engine. Valve's gaming service is great, hell they even made account theft more difficult with the introduction of the email verification system on steam so there's no argument for that. Plus Valve practically fathered many popular mods and games (Like Garry's Mod, Zombie Panic) available on Steam. (Please don't ban me for this)
[QUOTE=Robbobin;29313891] It's a shame it revolved around the categorical imperative, something I think most of facepunch would hate if they understood it more. [/QUOTE] It's not that bad come on. Like i said in my above post, i find it a useful tool for finding problems in policies or standpoints. But contra to my original post, i don't think it should be used 100% to decide every matter.
[QUOTE=Benf199105;29313535]And what do you mean [I]A priori[/I] supposes morality as it's objective? Do you mean like, having an [I]a priori[/I] morality, (i.e. one you gained without experience) is logically incorrect because it assumes that morality isn't subjective? i can't even work out what that means. Have i got that right? Because, if i gleaned that correctly; i'd agree here, you can't both suppose morality is subjective and objective, andf thus having [I]a prior[/I] moral codes doesn't work if you believe in a subjective moral code. And I agree with alot of the holes in deontology, gay rights and the axe murderer for example, but I would kind of call myself a kind of Kantian. I like the maxim's and I think they can go a long way to starting to find problems with policies or moral standpoints, but I don't think they should go ALL the way to deciding them. But like i said next time i just won't bother, i'll let the thread sit in bans for admitting warez and people flaming EA. [/QUOTE] Well, anything that is [i]a priori[/i] is ultimately objective because it's not subject to any contingent factors. The reason I believe this to be logically invalid is because in order for the claim that morality is achieved [i]a priori[/i] to make sense, you have to presuppose there is such an object (in a non-physical realm - Kant called it the realm of noumenals) that contains morality. The claim that there is a non-physical realm is entirely unfalsifiable, and hence is meaningless. Regretfully, you have to make one small presupposition for [i]any[/i] theory of morality to make sense. That's why - philosophically speaking - I'm a moral sceptic (possibly even a moral nihilist though I doubt there's much difference). In practice, I'm utilitarian, because I think ultimately people being happy is the one pursuit that isn't muddied with absurd counterexamples (though a hell of a lot of people disagree with me: retributivist thinkers for one example). Deontological ethics, as I see it, misunderstands how human beings act. We act in respect to our belief sets and our desires (not necessarily self-interested desires: that is important). We don't act for the sake of acting (again, lots of people will disagree with me but I think the burden of proof lies on them). Hence, a moral system that discounts one's desires [i]a priori[/i] is hugely counter-intuitive to what I believe all human action consists in. Haha, we have derailed this so much, but I like it. [editline]20th April 2011[/editline] [QUOTE=Benf199105;29314064]It's not that bad come on. Like i said in my above post, i find it a useful tool for finding problems in policies or standpoints. But contra to my original post, i don't think it should be used 100% to decide every matter.[/QUOTE] Just occurred to me that I sound really scathing in my previous posts, haha. I take back the attitude towards you, I just sound rude :wink: However I don't take it back to Kantian ethics! After grinding my way through the Metaphysics of Morals I feel I have just cause for hating his thought! :dance:
I honestly don't care. But I don't see the point of pirating Garry's Mod or any other Indie game though.
Some guy admitted to me to have pirated Portal 2 once. I'll NEVER pirate any game Valve makes, just because Valve is awesome like that.
I pirated once when i was 7 years old. Damn it, I am so banned. :/
[QUOTE=Benf199105;29314064]It's not that bad come on. Like i said in my above post, i find it a useful tool for finding problems in policies or standpoints. But contra to my original post, i don't think it should be used 100% to decide every matter.[/QUOTE] I think all the useful qualities of the categorical imperative can be summarized in the golden rule: One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself. But I actually think the silver rule is more important, but even then it's not conclusive because I can think if countless examples where I'd prefer it if people acted contrary to the ways they want to be treated: One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated. The only moral maxim that I really approve of is the utilitarian principle of greatest happiness. And even then I have the nagging feeling that I'm discounting the theory of higher and lower pleasures...
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