How does piracy exist?

[Haswellx86]

How can piracy even exist in the first place? Doesn't the creator of the game or even anything has the right to shut down the free sale of their own product by someone else?

[Middcore]

1 minute ago, NvidiaFirePro6900XXTX3DPRO said:

How can piracy even exist in the first place? Doesn't the creator of the game or even anything has the right to shut down the free sale of their own product by someone else?

"How can crime exist when there are laws against it?"

[Tan3l6]

There is no universal piracy crack team, that's why.

[freeagent]

You missed the early 2000s. 

 

Good times.

[Tan3l6]

Yeahm, these times there are so many free to play games the piracy I think has significally declined.

[Haswellx86]

@Middcore @Tan3l6 

But what I mean is that there are many platforms and programs that are running from so long and there is no way that the devs don't know about them.

[Mojo-Jojo]

12 minutes ago, NvidiaFirePro6900XXTX3DPRO said:

Doesn't the creator of the game or even anything has the right to shut down the free sale of their own product by someone else?

Yes. They have the right, but having a right to something doesn't mean it's matter of course that you can exercise that right. Enforcing copyright/piracy law is difficult due to the relatively anonymous nature of the internet, and how widespread information can travel in what is effectively an instant.

[Tan3l6]

Just now, NvidiaFirePro6900XXTX3DPRO said:

@Middcore @Tan3l6 

But what I mean is that there are many platforms and programs that are running from so long and there is no way that the devs don't know about them.

Could you refer to some? Some unactiavted Windows are in the interest of Microsofty I think - they rather tolerate some piracy, than people swapping to Linux or any other alternative it seems.

[Robchil]

Just now, Tan3l6 said:

Could you refer to some? Some unactiavted Windows are in the interest of Microsofty I think - they rather tolerate some piracy, than people swapping to Linux or any other alternative it seems.

True.. the bigest marketing microsoft had for a while was pirated OS's and software.. 

[Oshino Shinobu]

1 minute ago, NvidiaFirePro6900XXTX3DPRO said:

@Middcore @Tan3l6 

But what I mean is that there are many platforms and programs that are running from so long and there is no way that the devs don't know about them.

Whenever you take down a piracy site, a new one pops up, often with a backup of the old one restored within a few days, if not hours.

 

There's also issues with jurastiction for where the site is physically located and there's a process to getting things shut down as well, it's not as simple as just asking for it to be shut down. Unless they're going after the people running the site with legal action, there's often no point in shutting down a priacy site.

[Avocado Diaboli]

You do know piracy doesn't just mean illegally selling software or media, right? If you make something you don't have the distribution rights to available to someone else for free and they download it, that's still piracy. If you're a musician and I buy your album, upload the audio to YouTube and someone else downloads it for free to listen to, that's piracy. People operating under the profit motive are usually shut down eventually if they draw too much attention and are easily replaced. But the general concept of piracy doesn't require a sale anywhere in the process.

[Tan3l6]

Also there are no universal laws to prohibit piracy in all of the countries of the world I believe.

[avidgamer121]

41 minutes ago, Middcore said:

"How can crime exist when there are laws against it?"

it's not that big of a crime, especially compared to murder or something. I think it's still a grey area like you might have heard of the saying "imagine someone stole your car and it's still there."

[Middcore]

12 minutes ago, xdagamer said:

it's not that big of a crime, especially compared to murder or something. I think it's still a grey area like you might have heard of the saying "imagine someone stole your car and it's still there."

 

Completely missing the point but OK.

[BuckGup]

Piracy is the byproduct of unfair treatment of customers. People have no issue spending money and supporting the things they love. The issue is companies acting unfairly against you which results in pirating 

[avidgamer121]

1 hour ago, Middcore said:

 

Completely missing the point but OK.

i get it now, i think i did initially but put an afterthought which led to the confusion

[QuantumSingularity]

3 hours ago, NvidiaFirePro6900XXTX3DPRO said:

How can piracy even exist in the first place? Doesn't the creator of the game or even anything has the right to shut down the free sale of their own product by someone else?

Copyright laws and protecting intellectual property are exclusively first world problems. There are entire countries like mine (Bulgaria) which are basically glued together because of no copyright laws. We have the largest torrent trackers in the world, probably the last country with actual FTP servers and the only times when the government actually does something against piracy, is if you try to make money out of it or some seriously criminal stuff is involved (like underaged pr0n). No party even dares to raise the question of pursuing trackers and FTP servers because it's this free software/movies/games and the right to make your own alcohol, completely unsupervised that keeps people from starting a revolution. About 10 years ago, few members of the government tried to implement some actually functioning copyright laws, which were supposed to do something other than simply exist on paper to satisfy the EU, but in 2 days literally the entire country grounded to a hold with strikes. The government building and political limousines were set on fire. And ofc in less than 48 hours they brought back the FTP servers and trackers they have seized and removed only really criminal stuff (snuff and the formentioned underaged pr0n). I used to be a pirate myself, not because i was cheap, but because i couldn't afford actually buying the stuff. 15 years ago a simple game like NFS used to cost half of my monthly salary. I had to save for 2 whole years in order to build/upgrade a mid-tier PC. And although the situation now is far better than what it used to be (especially for the smart and for some of the educated people), there are still a lot of people, sadly the majority of the people actually, who still can't afford simple stuff like spending $30 on a licensed Windows or $50 on a game.

Also i've said this before, but up until the pandemic i used to pirate a whole game, play it a bit and if i liked it, i went on and bought it. It's not until Cyberpunk 2077 came along that i started paying for games in full before playing them. Thanks god i was one of the very few lucky ones who didn't have any problems with the game at all since launch.

 

Oh, forgot to mention something important - don't think that piracy is all rainbows, sunshine and unicorns with zero care in the world and only the joy of free products. More often than not that pirated software comes with additional bugs and problems which you either have to solve yourself OR live with them. It exposes your system and your details to whoever knows how many people. When most of my games were pirated it used to be completely normal to reinstall windows every 2 months, because it was getting just completely battered with nasties. Now i go years with a healthy system w/o the need to reinstall unless i do something stupid like restoring a defected and completely infected HDD not in VM.

[demonix00]

9 hours ago, Tan3l6 said:

Some unactiavted Windows are in the interest of Microsofty I think - they rather tolerate some piracy, than people swapping to Linux or any other alternative it seems.

You do know that microsoft still makes money from unactivated copies of windows 10 and 11 from all the telemetry they gather and sell to the highest bidder.

[Mojo-Jojo]

45 minutes ago, demonix00 said:

You do know that microsoft still makes money from unactivated copies of windows 10 and 11 from all the telemetry they gather and sell to the highest bidder.

[citation needed]