One fellow's thoughts on anti-piracy policies

Dreen said:

Spoiler

In past few years, the only games I bought were:
1. Mount & Blade
2. Soldat
3. Baldur's Gate series (compilation)
4. Thief series (1&2 compilation)
5. Carmageddon 2
6. Possibly some other one or two I dont remember.

And I played many many more. I pirate games and feel good about it. I buy games which I think are worth the support in form of my money. In Soldat's example, you dont even have to buy the game to enjoy it fully, all the subscription gives you is some aesthetic additions. Now there are things like COD4. I played it a bit, maybe got through single player a few times, spent few hours on multi and then threw it away. I feel I wasted time on it. So in effect I think much like the guy cited in OP, but I do sneak into movies, check out the film (maybe rewind it a bit just for myself to see relevant parts of it), and if I really like it, buy the ticket and enjoy it. If not I just leave. If I feel the movie sucked big time, I tell people about it.

My personal opinion about piracy is that there should rightly be pursuits after people who earn money through pirating software/music/movies. But going after people who do it for free is not going to change a single damn thing. Its like catching people on streets of large cities and conducting drug tests - surely you will catch some who take drugs and possibly some street low-level dealers - and then you boast the fact you 'combat drug abuse' when in reality you catch one in 10000 higher-level drug dealers. It makes me sick, people are told they should agree to be invigilated because some guys over at huge corporations calculated that piracy drops their income... even more laughable is when they claim the actual damages, counting each pirated copy as an unsold copy and therefore damage.


Edit: as for the statutory rights in UK: many shops simply do not accept opened products. So if you bought a game, open it and dont like it (you dont even have to take it out of the box), they most likely wont take it back. Regardless if you bought it last year or yesterday.

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Dreen said:

Lol did you even read what I wrote?

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Dreen said:

I pirate games and feel good about it..

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Archonsod said:

Try googling for statutory rights in the UK or visit the government or trading standard's website. Local Citizen's Advice office is your best bet though; they'll be able to tell you precisely what your rights are, who to go to if you need to get the law involved and how to avoid doing anything that might hurt your cause if you need to get Trading Standards involved.

As far as I'm aware you're entitled to an exchange (i.e. they give you a new copy for your old copy) within six months of buying regardless. Anything else gets a bit trickier due to the status of software under law.

It's worth asking to speak to a manager and requesting they give you a written statement of why they are refusing to refund you. Most of the time they'll back down regardless if they think you're going to be a pain in the arse, and if not having the written statement will help if you do need to go to citizen's advice or trading standards.

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enkidu said:

Defense really is always weaker than offense, because any defense can be scouted out and imaginitively overcome. 
If you continually obsess about keeping squirrels out of your birdfeeder,  the birds are more likely to give up and look elsewhere than the squirrels.

If they ever do manage to totally protect digital ownership rights, it'l mean some Big Brother kind of **** that will drive us all as far off the grid as we can stand to be, regardless of our honesty.

Most of us are more lazy or stupid than dishonest, I reckon that's where the line should be drawn.

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