a *sort of* solution to our broadband problem...

[hj2k_x]

Well, to try to keep this reasonable, let me bore you with some of my experiences.

For a period of a couple of years I made my living writing shareware and selling it on the internet. After the programs had acquired a bit of a reputation, illegal serial numbers started appearing on the net. I was, of course, concerned. But what happened was that the software started taking a big jump in sales, as it was reaching a far wider audience. Sometime later the serial numbers were included in one of the big serial lists ( distributed with a lookup program ). Sales again took a boost. So one chewed on one's concern and outrage, and accepted the incoming dollars.

I cannot find the reference at short notice, but this was one of the fundamental conclusions of one of the studies of P2P - that it helped the majority of artists, but did prejudice the real supersellers.

What you term piracy can actually help you!

This is also something that a lot of people overlook. Thanks for the personal insight . Lends a lot of support and credibility to my(our) arguments an may help sway the nonbelievers.

Also, I fail to see how if I were to download a song/movie/book/whatever that i was not ever going to purchase anyway, and watch/read/whatever it in the privacy of my own home, without making any money out of it, is infringing on anyone's right to anything.

 

[Lycanthrope]

This is also something that a lot of people overlook. Thanks for the personal insight . Lends a lot of support and credibility to my(our) arguments an may help sway the nonbelievers.

Also, I fail to see how if I were to download a song/movie/book/whatever that i was not ever going to purchase anyway, and watch/read/whatever it in the privacy of my own home, without making any money out of it, is infringing on anyone's right to anything.

While I undoubtedly get what you're saying, using something and not paying for it is pretty much theft ^.^

From a personal perpective, I'm a gamer, and obviously love gaming. There's a bit of tautology for you all. The thing is, a lot of "old games" you can't find in South Africa, and the only way to get them, is P2P or having a credit card/embossed debit card and finding them on eBay/Amazon or on www.direct2drive.com ...

I'll admit to have 3 games on my computer that I haven't bought. And not entirely ironically, they're three games that I love dearly, but have been at a loss to find anywhere in South Africa.

What I'm trying to say from my own personal perspective and in relation to Peter_J's and hj2k_x comments, is that there's never been a game that I've "pirated" that I haven't bought if I've found it.

I'm a collector, I pride myself in having a cupboard full of games that I've played over the years and loved.

And, in my honest opinion, there's nothing better than having a manual and the original disc-set of a game or program, it's great to say "Hey, I own that!"

I'd probably have even more games if I didn't have to fork out an extortionistic amount of money to Telkom.

From a personal perspective I have to agree, pirating software and music more often than not does good for a developer/artist. Morally speaking. Legally it's a bunch of hogwash.

I also love books, and in the cupboard right next to my games, I have my book collection... (I love Terry Pratchett, Anne Rice and Clive Barker XD) (And no, not the rugby player ) A good number of them I've read in libraries and bought not long after. I'm a sucker for hardbacks XD

Anyway, therein lies my opinion... c'est la vie XD

 

[Sandman30s]

Also, I fail to see how if I were to download a song/movie/book/whatever that i was not ever going to purchase anyway, and watch/read/whatever it in the privacy of my own home, without making any money out of it, is infringing on anyone's right to anything.

If you were not going to purchase it, why download and presumably enjoy it. This implies you got free entertainment. Why then don't you get your dstv for free? Because that kind of entertainment is enforced pay-tv. This issue of piracy will forever be a debate until someone enforces it and makes examples of a few freeloaders and leechers. Buying drugs is just as much a crime as selling drugs to the misinformed and desperate.

 

[hj2k_x]

While I undoubtedly get what you're saying, using something and not paying for it is pretty much theft ^.^

From a personal perpective, I'm a gamer, and obviously love gaming. There's a bit of tautology for you all. The thing is, a lot of "old games" you can't find in South Africa, and the only way to get them, is P2P or having a credit card/embossed debit card and finding them on eBay/Amazon or on www.direct2drive.com ...

I'll admit to have 3 games on my computer that I haven't bought. And not entirely ironically, they're three games that I love dearly, but have been at a loss to find anywhere in South Africa.

What I'm trying to say from my own personal perspective and in relation to Peter_J's and hj2k_x comments, is that there's never been a game that I've "pirated" that I haven't bought if I've found it.

I'm a collector, I pride myself in having a cupboard full of games that I've played over the years and loved.

And, in my honest opinion, there's nothing better than having a manual and the original disc-set of a game or program, it's great to say "Hey, I own that!"

I'd probably have even more games if I didn't have to fork out an extortionistic amount of money to Telkom.

From a personal perspective I have to agree, pirating software and music more often than not does good for a developer/artist. Morally speaking. Legally it's a bunch of hogwash.

I also love books, and in the cupboard right next to my games, I have my book collection... (I love Terry Pratchett, Anne Rice and Clive Barker XD) (And no, not the rugby player ) A good number of them I've read in libraries and bought not long after. I'm a sucker for hardbacks XD

Anyway, therein lies my opinion... c'est la vie XD

Ya, I haer what you are saying about the first point. In many cases this is the case as well. Legally speaking however, when it comes to downloading content off the net, it is not theft and it is not illegal if you do not distribute it.

Anyway, what you say about owning originals also strikes true for me. I used to love going to Musica to buy a new CD maybe once a month. There is nothing like having the original. But look at CD's nowadays- 3 good tracks if you are lucky and a price tag of over R150. Not worth it IMO.

Until music and movie companies realise that people are not willing to spend these ridiculous amounts of money of something that costs almost nothing to produce, people will download things off the net. They can either accept that, and try to do something about it(like bring prices to an acceptable level or think about different media for their product like the newly-released album-on-a-flash-drive ...) or they can try to 'combat' it by threatening people with legal action, blatantly misinforming the public about the legality of downloading things of the internet, and continue to charge what they do for CD's and DVD's.

I can only see one logical step to take.

 

[hj2k_x]

If you were not going to purchase it, why download and presumably enjoy it. This implies you got free entertainment. Why then don't you get your dstv for free? Because that kind of entertainment is enforced pay-tv. This issue of piracy will forever be a debate until someone enforces it and makes examples of a few freeloaders and leechers. Buying drugs is just as much a crime as selling drugs to the misinformed and desperate.

There is no way that you can compare getting things off the internet to buying drugs. The comparison simply isn't apt here.

So you are saying that I should have to pay for entertainment because I enjoyed it anyway? The problem with that argument is that the RIAA/MPAA and all the rest complain about 'piracy' stealing money away from artists. This argument fails if I was not going to go out and pay for this 'entertainment' anyway.

 

[Sandman30s]

So you are saying that I should have to pay for entertainment because I enjoyed it anyway? The problem with that argument is that the RIAA/MPAA and all the rest complain about 'piracy' stealing money away from artists. This argument fails if I was not going to go out and pay for this 'entertainment' anyway.

If you enjoyed it, the moral or honest thing to do is buy it, and support the artist. Let me tell you something about publishers - they are the rich who get richer and the artist should not have to suffer because of it. An author gets only 5 to 15% of the WHOLESALE price of a book, after an agent takes his 15% cut. So let's say a book wholesales for R40 - the author would get an 'amazing' R2 for one book. Everyone else profits from this cash cow the author who just slaved for a year at least to perfect the book. The more you pirate it, the less the author gets. The same with a cd - how much do you think the artist gets? Don't quote me the American top-100 - everyone gets rich here. Think about the poor local singer who has his family to support and lives off the royalties. Deny him that and you are shooting the cow that gave you milk in the first place.

 

[hj2k_x]

If you enjoyed it, the moral or honest thing to do is buy it, and support the artist. Let me tell you something about publishers - they are the rich who get richer and the artist should not have to suffer because of it. An author gets only 5 to 15% of the WHOLESALE price of a book, after an agent takes his 15% cut. So let's say a book wholesales for R40 - the author would get an 'amazing' R2 for one book. Everyone else profits from this cash cow the author who just slaved for a year at least to perfect the book. The more you pirate it, the less the author gets. The same with a cd - how much do you think the artist gets? Don't quote me the American top-100 - everyone gets rich here. Think about the poor local singer who has his family to support and lives off the royalties. Deny him that and you are shooting the cow that gave you milk in the first place.

At least we have put the legal debate to bed then.

Then pay the publishers less. Simple.

 

[Sandman30s]

Then pay the publishers less. Simple.

If only it were that simple. Authors have no choice but to abide by the terms of commercial publishers. IF they can get a contract, which are few and far between. Authors can go other routes of using unscrupulous publishers or self-publishing, but these routes are fraught with well documented dangers. You think if I get a contract with Harper-Collins, I am going to name my terms?? Ya right.

 

[ld13]

This is how I see it:
Hypothetically I do pirate games sometimes. But, most of the games that I did hypothetically ‘pirate’, I bought shortly afterwards. NOTHING on earth beats having the original package and nothing can be more enjoyable than reading the manual on the ride back home! On the sidelines: Do note that you cannot ‘own’ some of these Original games, softwares etc etc as previously mentioned. There is some clause in the small text of some of these packages that supposedly informs you that you don’t own the title/package and that you are merely given the Right to ‘use’ it.

A few months ago (2006 about) my neighbor got Splinter Cell, the first one. For some reason still unknown to man, that game made it onto my rather powerful “computer”. Today I sit with an original package with not just that One game, but the whole trilogy!

And just the other day my neighbor got that new Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars. Once again it *appeared* on my PC (strange things these games). It did not work properly even. Ontop of that, I did not really like it either. It got uninstalled and I did not buy it.


Now, about our little bandwidth problem…. In our neighborhood there are also a few internet lines being shared at the moment. Good idea really, and nice for *sharing* and gaming and so on. My question now is what nice local and reliable mail servers are available in SA?

 

[hj2k_x]

If only it were that simple. Authors have no choice but to abide by the terms of commercial publishers. IF they can get a contract, which are few and far between. Authors can go other routes of using unscrupulous publishers or self-publishing, but these routes are fraught with well documented dangers. You think if I get a contract with Harper-Collins, I am going to name my terms?? Ya right.

What I am saying is that what should be targeted are the publishers and record companies that are exploiting the authors and artists.

NOT the average Joe on the street, trying to get what he wants at a reasonable price.

 

[guest2013-1]

- cannot share uncapped, only one connection allowed. Wow we would all be doing that already
- legalize piracy in download cafes? yeah right
- ditto on the overseas dvd's - want your pirated stuff to get intercepted at customs?

I don't work for telkom, but I am sorry to say, EVERYONE that is downloading over 30g per month is certainly doing a fair percentage illegally. Download a DVD it it is almost certainly illegal to do so. You cannot hit 30g a month every month on demos or youtube vids.

Well, to give you an idea (i'm a developer) I've downloaded around 23 gigs of stuff I need for work. This includes service pack updates for SQL Server 2005, Vista updates, Windows SDK files etc.

Those are all above 1.5gig per download. This isn't even counting my research and code samples I download. not to mention the constant uploading and downloading of customer reports (they are usually about 100meg worth each)

This is excluding the 15 gig download a month we have to do to get new copies of data for maintenance and reports. a download cafe of some sort would be welcome, but I doubt they'll be able to handle our kind of traffic for cheaper than we do it already

 

[TheLoot]

Piracy is a criminal offence. The same as walking into a shop and stealing a cd off the shelf. Ever watch the BSA ads? Those who say it is a civil matter are putting their minds at ease trying to reduce the intensity of the offence. Piracy is not the same as speeding.

Buys further notes that downloading a copyrighted movie is a civil matter (between downloader and rights holder), but downloading and selling / further distributing a copyrighted movie is a criminal matter (section 27 of the Copyright Act).

Source
It's the paragraph just above the heading "Internet users also protected"

 

[kris860911]

For some reason still unknown to man, that game made it onto my rather powerful “computer”.
......
Once again it *appeared* on my PC (strange things these games).

Hmmm. Happens to you aswell, hey?

I "found" some music on my PC that got transfered (A virus or something , im not a computer genius) from my friend's pc at a LAN... Band's name was Desperation Band. They pretty good. So I bought the CD.

How else am I gonna hear about them? (Christian band, so they don't play on the radio)

 

[KampfGherkin]

Right. Anybody here ever hear of Steam!? /sarcasm

Just recently reformatted my system and forgot to backup my Steam Games.

Uhm, yeah. 9gigs later. (Thank God a friend had the core files on his system). Otherwise Telkom would've charged me another - what R500 bucks? For software I already paid for.

Typical.

 

[Conspirator]

And just the other day my neighbor got that new Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars. Once again it *appeared* on my PC (strange things these games). It did not work properly even. Ontop of that, I did not really like it either. It got uninstalled and I did not buy it.

What? That game rocks.

I "found" some music on my PC that got transfered (A virus or something , im not a computer genius) from my friend's pc at a LAN...

Me is gonna hook up my new external HDD to a few PCs soon to see how many "viruses" I can catch.

 

[ld13]

What? That game rocks.

Hey! I can like what I want to like and I may dislike what I decide to dislike. Maybe in a few years/months I will pick it up and give it a go again. But not in the near future.