Thread: Internet Piracy

I have to admit, I'm an avid pirater; games, movies, mp3s and programs. Now personally, I do occasionally find I have to justify myself, these are my reasons.

For games, if anybody has any kind of interest in the E gaming industry, you'll find that as the games have improved in graphics and power, so too has the price. Your average PS3 game, which are the most powerful on the market, is $110 Australian, now that is a lot of money over here, and even taking inflation into account, games have skyrocketed in price to the consumer, but decreased in cost to design and manufacture. Now you can't actually pirate PS3 games (yet), however PC games suffer the same problem, they're around $80 each. What is a good tactic by companies is to offer a multiplayer or online content, only available to legal versions of the game. I recently bought a CoD 4 serial so I could play my pirated version online.

Music, this is simple, the reason that music companies whine is because they don't want to change. They point to falling cd sales, and I say, if I want a particular song, I don't wanna have to go down to my local cd store, hope they have it, and buy an overpriced album that is chock full of songs I don't want. I then have to put those songs on my computer if I wanted to then transfer them onto my ipod. And conveniently, many cds have blocks on them to prevent just that. Or I could download it off limewire without leaving my room. I also justify it by asking who am I ripping off? The artist, or the music company? The answer is the music company, at the end of the day, artists get the most income from concerts and endorsements than from cd sales. To put it simply, if you're singing cause you want to entertain people, you don't care if I download your music, If you're singing for the money, then you don't deserve it.

Movies, again, similiar idea, most of the money goes to the production company rather than to the actual film makers. Production companies also rip off basically everybody left right and center (they hang theatres out to dry), so I figure I'm fighting back. Also, don't wanna go through all that business of finding the DVD.

Programs, I don't download many programs, and the pirate versions often don't upgrade (patch) themeselves, so I figure it's a fair trade. But you know, Microsoft Word, the basic word processor is over $100 instore, and I'm not gonna pay that much for a word processor.

If companies want to survive, then they have to change the way they act. Music companies should move online, if I can't find a song on limewire, I'm happy to pay $1 for it on itunes, companies have to adjust to the customer, not the other way round, and these days the customer is online, not in the store.

Another brilliant adaption against game piracy is Steam.
Steam is an online store where you can buy and download games, many companies including Valve, creators of the acclaimed Half-Life series, sell exclusively on steam, if you buy a cd of them in store, it'll only work if you hve steam installed, the same with many other games sold on steam.

For movies, the answer is simple, make movies that people will go to see in cinema, rather than wait for the DVD. And move online.

A product is only worth as much as the customer will pay for it, and right now, many media products are not worth the price, but they are worth the download.