<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Gilrad:
[QBThis is clearly a hipothetical situation, but just imagine that you hear on the news that chikiquta banannas were picked from Africa using slave labor. What I am doing would be more or less the same as stealing a bananna from the store, and stomping on it when I get outside.
[/QB]<hr></blockquote>
I've stayed out of this one until now, others have eloquently expressed how I feel about pirating (always wrong) and theft ingeneral (wrong except possibly in the case of food/clothing/medical supplies)

But let's take your hypothetical and run withit a bit, shall we? Because therin lies the flaw in your "civil disobedience" argument. (and btw, I'm a radical from way back, have no problem with civil disobedience, including breaking the law if necessary).

But back to the bananas. You see, the problem with this reasoning, is that your aim is to halt the use of slave labor. But your action re-inforces the very thing you're trying to stop. You have done nothing to reduce the demand for bananas, you have done nothing to hold Chiquita responsible for their actions, you have done nothing to help the conditions of the laborers.

All you have done, is to force an even GREATER demand for importing bananas, pepetuating the problem, rather than solving it.

If you truly believe makers of lousy games are evil and need to be stopped (and I would suggest there are FAR more worthy targets). Then spend your time and energy persuading people not to buy bad games, not to buy ANY games from soulless big companies. Spend your efforts PROMOTING good games, those made by a small team of designers and funded on a shoe-string (like Wiz 8). Convince the public to play those. Spend your time writing, boycotting, persuading...doing SOMETHING that might make a difference.

Ripping off games and playing them to spite the company who made them is just masturbation. You accomplish nothing but make yourself feel good, and don't expect a lot of respect when you talk about it in public.

Preach it Brother [img]smile.gif[/img]

and to add another point onto that one...

Weither you like it or not, this forum is the media, weither you like it or not, you are not forced to watch tv, weither you like it or not you have your choice of entertainment news, and entertainment. If you dont want to be subjected to the media, then go live in a cave. If you dont want to use the media, then dont protest. Civil disobedience thrives on either of two things, the media, and annoyance. If you get the attention of the mainstream media to your plight and moral struggle, then that can pressure. If you can be so much of an annoyance to the company perpertrating the crime against you, then it can change. Pirating games does none of those things, it annoys companys, but not to the extent that would force them to change. But it also alrets the media (mainstream and otherwise) to the companys plight. Why are game prices so high? pirates. You contribute to your original problem, of not wanting to pay for games. Game prices constantly go up, and they go up because people steal them.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by KHaN:
I've been reading this thread and thought I'd TRY and make a point or three.

First...sites that support or distribute pirated software lose their ISP (as it should be)and sometimes can face legal ramifications. Ziroc could get in trouble for having people on this forum giving a nod to owning pirated software. So it does need to stop. Emails are the perfect way to do this because it stays off IW. If you have any respect for this site you will stop discussing it now and take it off-site.

Okay so I only had one point to make. ;)

If anyone needs clarification as to what I'm talking about e-mail me.
Pirating software is a CRIME folks. Lets not discuss it on a public forum like Ironworks.

Thanks<hr></blockquote>


I can't get in trouble for what someone else says here, we are exempt from that. BUT, I still won't allow any talk about Piracy. What is funny is that MANY of the Game Developers that made W&W, Wizardry 8, Baldurs Gate series and more.. MANY of them visit daily. They may not post, but they DO read. So, saying you are pirating Wizardry 8 here is not just wrong, it's stupid.

PS: Someone said "But can't we debate this?" -- Um. NO. There is nothing to debate. It's STEALING. period. exclamation point. :D

Can't help it, gotta give my $.02

1. Gilrad:
The more you talk, the more you lose ground. You haven't made one single statement that is original, thus you are "mainstream". I believe the flaw in your banana story has already been pointed out. Stealing the banana only hurts the store, not the growers. The store just has to order more from them. You made the same amount of money for the slave-owners as the person who bought it. What you did was hurt a local shop owner. As for your BS piracy argument, that is even worse. Supposing you are "boycotting" the game company, there is no reason at all for you to actually play the game. Not buying it is the only thing to do here. Playing it serves no purpose other than your own amusement, and makes you a hippocrite (SP?) for saying that people only want it because they are "told" to, but then wanting it yourself.

2. - About cracking and copy protection: people who want to pirate games will pirate games. Copy protection does not stop them, as it can be defeated. THE ONLY PEOPLE HURT BY COPY PROTECTION ARE THE LEGAL CUSTOMERS!!!! Why does the pirate care if a game is copy protected? It's not protected any more by the time the pirate downloads it. Meanwhile, people who shelled out cash for the game are dealing with things like Safedisc not working in some CD-ROM drives and losing their manual and no longer being able to answer the questions (from back in those days). Not to mention the pain in the arse of having to put the CD in the drive to play, which is why I crack all of the games I buy that force me to do that. In other cases, such as CD-KEY types, CD KEY Generators come out, so the ONLY PEOPLE HURT BY THE PROTECTION, once again, are the people who paid for it and can't play their game online because a pirate has stolen their key.
Copy protection is the biggest way the software industry slaps its customers in the face, second to not supporting their products after release. One of my friends called Sierra when he bought Half Life because it was saying his CD KEY was in use when he tried to play online and the person who answered the phone ACTUALLY said to him "You wouldn't have these problems if you weren't a thief, why don't you go buy the game for real" and refused to help in any way. Kinda makes it hard to feel sorry for them when they treat the people attempting to support them like that.

Once again, the main point here is that copy protection doesn't stop any piracy. These companies are actually making the decision to do things in their products that have no effect on anything in the world except to inconvenience their paying customers.

I personally WOULD boycott any company that put protection on their games, except I like to play games and am far more concerned with enjoying what little spare time I have than trying to change the world.



Sorry for the rant....SirTech could have paid their game designers just that little bit more if they hadn't wasted money licensing safedisc and forcing all of us here to constantly swap CDs in and out of their drives. Mabye game companies should provide free CD-ROM replacements to every customer who's drive dies 2 years early because of all the wear & tear.... ;)

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Ziroc:



I can't get in trouble for what someone else says here, we are exempt from that. BUT, I still won't allow any talk about Piracy. What is funny is that MANY of the Game Developers that made W&W, Wizardry 8, Baldurs Gate series and more.. MANY of them visit daily. They may not post, but they DO read. So, saying you are pirating Wizardry 8 here is not just wrong, it's stupid.

PS: Someone said "But can't we debate this?" -- Um. NO. There is nothing to debate. It's STEALING. period. exclamation point. :D <hr></blockquote>

Kewl...I was worried...don't want to see you go down for someone elses
stupid comments. I've known ppl who have had it happen to them before.
When ppl gripe about a game costing $50 bucks...well the reason is piracy folks.
Okay discussion finished. [img]smile.gif[/img]
Go buy a game and support your favorite game makers! I know when M&M comes out 3D0 will be getting alot of $ from me.

[ 01-11-2002: Message edited by: KHaN ]</p>

Well this truely is interesting. But, at the request of Ziroc, I will only make this last post in this thread.

Many of you probably belive I was trying to show you how I am right and you are wrong, probably the basis behind someone's accusation of me being a hipocrite. That was not the point, however. I was trying to get differing viewpoints about this topic, as one person's two cents, to me, is worth thousands of peoples' opinions.
So what did I get from this? Well, for one, I got on the bad side of alot of people unintentionally. :(
Several people were stating how they still didn't understand mainstream. I suppose it would be hard to see from the inside.
I found myself, that my views were rather disorderly. I jumped back and fourth between personal actions (playing the game out of spite), and revolutionary do-it-for-the-people ideas, such as the banana situation (oh, and the store in the situation was a Chiquita Banana store, paid directly by chiquita [img]smile.gif[/img] ). Considering the fact that most people are blind to their disease, it would do them anything but good to get rid of their reliances, and so I would only support my views for personal enligtenment.
After every reply, I was greeted by critisizm. I suppose that this is the last time I will ever post my views publically, as a good amount of the critisizm was made by people who never even bothered to interperate what I wrote.

I just hope that in one point or another, the people here will find themselves, for if you dont, you will not truely live life.

I think this topic has gone on far enough. There's nothing left to be said on it, other than:

KHaN, Scronan, et al: thank you for your comments in support against software piracy. I have posted something along these lines in General Discussions as well.

Gilrad, and others: Please keep your piracy-habits to yourself. We cannot do anything about what you choose to do at home (although I do fervently hope the feds catch up with you one day, and incarcerate you for your crimes as you so richly deserve), but you WILL cease and desist bringing up ANY more topics along these lines at the Wizardry 8 forum, or your topics will be deleted and you most likely will be banned from posting or participating here again.

That said, this subject, and this thread, is now officially CLOSED.

-Sazerac