Internet 'piracy'

It is still illegal. The Japanese government could sue you and everyone else who downloads anime from out of Japan, but it would be too much hassle for them to go through other countries court systems just to track down a few anime pirates here and there.

...not to mention the ridiculous amount of free advertising and the fandoms it creates. Western musicians, or at least their publishers, pay to advertise worldwide and get some album sales out of it. However, anime as an entity has (imo) more fervent and often physically more supporters than this and other mediums - anime studios advertise in Japan, sell loads in Japan, get outside interest through downloads and can then sell the rights, or even their own products. I know I'll buy just about anything related to my favourite series'.

Yeah certainly that too. Although I have noticed the Japanese government is starting to crack down every so slightly. A lot of animes are starting to be interrupted with messages warning pirates against pirating anime because it is illegal. Talk about closing the barn door after the horses have left.

Personally, i see downloads as an upgraded demo, if you like it, you buy it without the bugs and stuff. If you don't you won't have wasted €-60, on nothing.

Of course you also have those who download and ignore the bugs, never buying the game at all. Those are who'm they should be clamping down on.

When I download music, I don't feel like I'm hurting the artists, because I'm really not taking any money from the artists. I'm just not giving money to the people who work for the record company and don't deserve the money as much as the artists. That's what the music business is like - if a band makes an album, and it sells very well, it's no big deal. It just means that they're popular and will likely get a contract to make several more albums. They don't get all the money the album makes. From what I've heard, music artists make most of their money from tours and merchandise. So, if I really want to support a band, I'll go to their concert and buy one of their shirts while there, not spend $20 on an album.

When it comes to TV, I again don't feel bad. What's the difference between watching a show on TV when it comes on and downloading it a few days later because you missed it? I'm still paying for cable, but by downloading it off the internet, I'm able to watch it when I want, without wasting eight minutes of every half-hour sitting through commercials that won't get me to spend any more money. Also, a lot of the things I download aren't available on DVD yet, or if they are, I wouldn't buy them unless they were marked way the hell down or in a second-hand shop for cheap (and in either case, the makers of the show wouldn't be getting any money from me).

That is not to say that all piracy is the same situation, however. I heard someone explain recently that piracy of PC games is what has caused most companies that make PC games focus on making games for consoles instead and just port them to the PC. The companies suffer low sales because people always pirate the games, and they see that console owners typically buy the games and don't pirate them, so they shift their focus to console owners. In other words, if you're tired of all the big PC gaming companies jumping boat and making games for consoles, blame the pirates who never buy any PC games.

Do you even know how many console pirates there are? Sure, there are alot more on the pc but by hell, console pirates can still play ONLINE, they actually are leeching off of official and dedicated servers whereas we are content with private servers or no MP at all.
In total, i know 7 console pirates and 4 pc pirates, unincluding myself. Guess what, those console pirates? Crooked bunch, never buy ANYTHING, whereas the pc pirates still buy games they actually like.

Obviously, from that information i cannot say it is as such globally or even regionally, but it is something to go by.

That is hilarious.
Instead of looking at the matter realistically, and seeing that all said and done, development for consoles is cheaper (devkits are laughably cheap and the only real extra investment; otherwise, devtime is considerably reduced because of the unified hardware structure, the lower quality requirements and the console audience's tendency to buy everything, no matter how qualitatively horrid) and yields a higher ROI - instead of that, people still believe in finger-pointing like that?
Truly, that amuses me to no end.

I would get a new Internet provider, and when I called in to cancel I would let them know that it is because of that very policy. They wont keep doing it if it cost them customers - and they wont lobby the government to enforce protect either since they don't want to be forced to fight against piracy since again, it would cost them customers.

Justified? Yes. Sensible? No.


We're all hypocrites and have double standards in some or another anyway ... so it doesn't really matter.

In any case, I support action against illegal downloads because, when all is said and done, any thing I might obtain illegally isn't important to me. If it was, I would've paid for it.

I have to say no on this one as well, for no reasons other than that I don't believe the government should be the attack dogs for the entertainment industry.

If the copyright holders want my money, make good products that I'd want to pay money for, don't get my government to spend my tax dollars to make me pay for your shitty products just so I can find out it's crap.

Companies have every right to try to prevent their products from being pirated, but I personally don't think they should monitor your internet activity, I'd like to feel I have some privacy. I do pirate things (games, anime/manga, programs) but often I end up buying the games I pirate so I can have multiplayer, and if I don't buy it then I wouldn't have bought it even if I couldn't have pirated it. To a lesser degree I will buy anime as well, but the fact that a lot of series I like don't get released in this region kind of prevents me from buying much even tho i do buy some merchandise too. If they were able to prevent piracy for good I would be a bit disappointed, but I can live without doing it.

Wait... what? So its not important if you didn't pay for it? What kind of philosophy is that?

Oh well, thats people for you...

Depends on what constitutes for "action against illegal downloads" in most cases, but generally, yes.

People getting fined for "only" downloading thousands of songs or downloading games and the like should happen more often then it does.

All the "I just want to try it before I buy it" or "I sometimes buy it after I dl it" type stuff is just an attempt to make them feel that they're justified doing it..

I'm mostly interested in where the money goes that the entertainment industry claims they're losing.

I'm almost positive that everyone involved can still live off millions a year even if their product gets pirated.

Keep the government as much as you can away from the internet. Thats my motto and Ill abide by it to death. This is the territory of freedom and expression, and although yes publishers get screwed over and sometimes individuals, the internet must fence off government. If we don't we're going to have pirates sharing jail cells with murderers. Same sympathy I fell for the pot-head getting ass-raped every night in his cell by a wife beater.

Example: There's a lot of people who buy a video game full price the day it comes out. Why do they do that? They can get it used for much cheaper later, they just have to wait. It's simple, they just really want to play that game. People with the patience to wait until the price goes down don't care about the game as much. To put it another way, it's like grinding in a MMORPG, people pirate just to have things to kill time.

Well, you know, some people dont actually have the money to buy it at full price, and have to wait, whether they want or not...

Which is also the case with many pirates.

Which is why any person with any semblance of intelligence will save up that money beforehand. If they are so poor that they can't afford it, then that means that there are more important things than said item.