Is it wrong to pay for things that can be had for free?

[Novus]

Can I haz ergodox?

This is how the NEW WORLD works..

You see angelina jolie looking super sexy while hacking the computer across a pciex bus..

She's doing all of this while typing into an Ergodox..   An ergodox producer pays into that..  She's looking into a Dell monitor, dell pays for that, she's wearing Victoria secrets lingerie, Victoria secrets pay for that..


This ad component has already been part of the movie industry for the longest time, but NOW because distribution can no longer be monopolized, The cost to produce will fall heavier on investors and advertisers..

THE UPSIDE however, is that the more the movie is seen, either On the silver screen, or FREE at home, OVERALL  MORE people are able to see it than before.. So the cost is merely OFFSET and rebalanced versus the traditional model..

Thank you for smoking.

[paicrai]

[rowdy]

Why are there two threads on this?

[Novus]

TIL I learned geekhack is a bunch of plebeians and socialists.

[katushkin]

TIL I learned geekhack is a bunch of plebeians and socialists.

But the thingy is the something of the proletariat!

[paicrai]

lol @ thread

[JaccoW]

There was actually a good reason in my country to torrent until recently.
- Strictly speaking it wasn't illegal to download something but it was to spread it.
- An average internet speed of 10 Mbps back in 2012 meant downloading was fast. (For comparison, my provider has upgraded all its customers this year to 30+ Mbps and my home is doing 120+ Mbps)
- It was easier and gave you much more content
- It will often take months for the latest movies or series to come to Europe. (F.E. Big Hero 6 was released this february whereas the US got it in October)

If you were a fan of anime or other niche entertainment your only options were to look for a place that sold imported ones and use a region free DVD-player.
Blu-ray is even worse because for some reason Europe was grouped with Africa aka a huge group that can't even afford them making the market even smaller. Oh and Netflix and the like took until September 2013 to come here.

That being said;

Yes it is wrong to simply demand something be free instead of paying for it IF you yourself demand payment for your time.
You are not paying for the content itself but the time that was invested in honing the skills necessary to bring this to you.

Google Docs might work okay for most people but I prefer MS Office. And I think their subscription plan with Office 365 is great.
Hardware doesn't need to be replaced until you find yourself at a point where you can no longer do what you want to do without upgrading.
But for some reason we have come to accept that certain companies stop software support for phones as soon as they leave the factory, making the phone obsolete while other ones can stay up to date with the occasional software update.

You are paying them for their time.
Sure, there are custom roms but that means you, or other people you are piggybacking on, are spending their time to keep it up to date.

...
Reminds me of this:


You see a lot of the people that torrented when they were young stopped doing so as they grew older. Time becomes more important than money.
It's why they spend money on a mechanic instead of heading into the garage.

You always pay for it one way or other.

There is the famous Google quote: "If you are not paying, then YOU are the product."

Google-nomics has turned thousands of years of mercantile tradition on its ear overnight.

"If you aren't paying for the product, you are the product."
blue_beetle on MetaFilter - (2010)
Well, most likely. It seems to be a quote from the internet

Even though it is wrong.

[...] One time I downloaded Transformers (the movie) because the kids wanted to watch it at a Birthday party. BAD IDEA. The cartoon that I knew as a kid (which was free to air), has become a propaganda video for the US Armed Forces and an advertorial for General Motors.  It was a freaking waste of time. Quite fortunately, the kids didn�t like the movie too because they felt the robots looked scary (as opposed to the nice talkative round yellow bug that Bumblebee is in the cartoons) so all the kids, except for an autistic boy, left within 10-15 minutes of the movie. Should I have paid for this? If I had, I would feel so miserable, because I could have more pleasure setting fire to a handful of dollar bills.

BTW, for those who have never watched it, Transformers is strictly a movie for the male 15-25 year old demographic with a maximum IQ of 100 and maximum education of high school. For all older or more intelligent/ educated males, I would recommend porn.

QFT

And Transformers 4: Age of extinction is the only movie that I just shut off and walked away from. It was even worse than a million ways to die in the west. And the only reason that I didn't walk out on that one was because it was in cinema and I didn't want to waste my money that way.

[Air tree]

TIL I learned geekhack is a bunch of plebeians and socialists.

Socialist 4 lyfe M8

[NoblesseOblige]

The categorical imperative applies nicely to these sort of questions.

If everyone pirated (see: stole) then the concept of property would seize to exist.
Without the concept of property then nothing could be stolen (as it couldn't be owned).
A contradiction arises, thus the assertion "pirating is right" can't logically be sane.

Personally, I pirated when I was younger and didn't have a disposable income. Now I have the cash flow to spend on digital goods, so I do. I didn't make excuses to justify when I did pirate though. I accepted that it was wrong then, just as it is wrong now.

[fohat.digs]

Why are there two threads on this?

So that the evil twin can have a separate voice.

[GenKaan]

Since the gaming industry is more interested in developing DRM than playable games you kinda have to pirate most games in order to se if you can play them on release.
I paid for win8 and now I will never pay microsoft a singel dollar ever again. Piece of **** software
Wont ever pay Adobe for PS until I start to make money from it and never for any cloud trash solutions.

[Oobly]

It depends.

For games and music, it's nice to try before you buy. If it's decent, for sure, pay the artist / developer their dues. My conscience won't let me not do this. If it's crap, then... at least you've dodged a bullet. People are happiest when making "fair" deals. Over / underpaying the perceived value of the product is not satisfying.

So being forced to buy a whole album when you've only heard a couple songs is a bit hit or miss. If you hate the rest of the album, you feel ripped off. On the other hand, if you get the whole thing for free and love it, you won't value it as much if you don't pay for it and it should "sit wrong" with you, prick your conscience, too.

For some games the torrent is a better experience than the legit copy, usually for copy protection reasons, which is kind of ironic. Too many game publishers make the mistake of forcing strong (and complicated or plain broken) DRM down the throats of consumers and then complaining of lost sales when those same consumers rip it because of the DRM crap.

Something I realised early on in life and I'm surprised so many publishers haven't is there are 3 main groups of gamers. Those who'll always get the "free" version, those who'll always buy the legit version and those who may do either depending on the perceived value of the product and the cost to them (in terms of time, money and convenience). That 3rd group are the ones they need to target and attract with good value and no added inconvenience over a ripped copy, possibly with some extra account-based incentives or whatever to sweeten the "legit" route. The "good value" part is pretty hard to find in many games nowadays, although there are some notable exceptions (GTA series and some others).

Also, the perceived value is entirely different for different people. This is why I really love the way Radiohead's "pay what you want" system was done for their "In Rainbows" album.

I have a friend who just loves to get the whole package when he gets a new game. The printed "manual", how it looks on his shelf, etc. Same for another of my friends and his CD collection. I don't care so much about those things, but I do want to make "fair" deals.

I guess the big issue for me is more about ethics education and social pressures than about "should you torrent or not". A well brought up and educated person will make the balanced decision, despite social pressure to do either of the extreme options and will feel most satisfied when doing so.

[nubbinator]

Farmers get sunlight for free. Sunlight is utilized to grow the crops. Farmers sell the crops to the consumer.

Now you're telling me, we should turn around, thank the sun, and pay it for the sunlight...

Here's what aint free for the farmer (excluding subsidies):
Labor, materials, heavy machinery, distribution, logistics, gas, electricity, water, seeds, fertilizer, & land.

This is a tp thread, what are you doing bringing logic and valid points in here?

[taylordcraig]

Farmers get sunlight for free. Sunlight is utilized to grow the crops. Farmers sell the crops to the consumer.

Now you're telling me, we should turn around, thank the sun, and pay it for the sunlight...

Here's what aint free for the farmer (excluding subsidies):
Labor, materials, heavy machinery, distribution, logistics, gas, electricity, water, seeds, fertilizer, & land.

This is a tp thread, what are you doing bringing logic and valid points in here?

I'm not sure how you all so wonderfully missed the point.
He's not saying it's thankless for the farmer, only that we don't pay the sun because it's by and large free.
If the farmer could get fertilizer free, or gas for free, don't you think he'd do that instead of paying for it?

TADA.

[taylordcraig]

Farmers get sunlight for free. Sunlight is utilized to grow the crops. Farmers sell the crops to the consumer.

Now you're telling me, we should turn around, thank the sun, and pay it for the sunlight...

Here's what aint free for the farmer (excluding subsidies):
Labor, materials, heavy machinery, distribution, logistics, gas, electricity, water, seeds, fertilizer, & land.

This is a tp thread, what are you doing bringing logic and valid points in here?

I'm not sure how you all so wonderfully missed the point.
He's not saying it's thankless for the farmer, only that we don't pay the sun because it's by and large free.
If the farmer could get fertilizer free, or gas for free, don't you think he'd do that instead of paying for it?

TADA.

I don't appreciate whatever mod moved my message from one thread to another.
Taking my words entirely out of context.
This isn't even a tp4 thread.

[Lanx]

i honestly don't know:

person #1: standard gay hippie from vancouver.  spends 15min doing his hair in the morning.  makes sure to wear sunglasses that color matches his backpack that matches his phone.  7 different colors of sunglasses apparently.

person #2: business student and works at family business with dad.  gamer.  asian.  doesn't create original work.  redditor.

person #3:  factory worker.  small towner.  wants to make music as a career.  not likely to happen

all 20smths if it matters.

i've literally never gotten a coherent statement from anyone in 15 years about why torrenting is good, so i didn't bother asking.

these are just the most extremists of free torrenting* supporters.

*there are people that torrent because they want a demo like you used to get or to showroom without actually going to the store.  they will buy afterwards if they plan to keep using the content. these are NOT 'free torrenters'; free torrenters want full access to current media without ever paying or watching ads

EDIT:

what is the current climte nowadays?  do people discriminate between music, movies. and games?  how about ebooks?

This is why torrenting is good and how some people/companies have used it to this effect.

Advertising.

not just advertising, the most powerful form of advertising is, "word of mouth".

case in point,
You could play "sh*t be gone" plumbers commercials 24/7, it wouldn't really matter, until.

until you call up your friend and you're like "hey, who did you use to fix your toilet and they didn't rip you off?"

word of mouth

You have whatever is torrented, lets say "Kingsman" poor college kid movieguy torrents it, loves it.
This broke ass college kid is poor, he wouldn't have seen this film otherwise.

broke ass college kid goes to a "kegger" or whatever frat party, he tells 4 or 10 other kids "yo kingsman is the bomb diggity" (or whatever new language kids talk in nowadays) and since of these kids are dumb frat guys and probably use macs, torrents would be too difficult for their asses to handle beyond singing racist hanging songs, so they'll just all goto a movie theatre and see it, since the "movieguy" said it was good.

these dumb frat boys would have just spent the night singing racist songs, now instead they all go see a british guy kill lots of church go'ers and movie ticket money.

[iamtootallforthis]

I purchase all my music. My thoughts is that I would like to support the artist. Yes, I know very little ends up going to the artists nowadays, but I still feel better doing that then torrenting the album. Plus, I like to own a physical copy of the album. I have been looking into buying a record player and buying some vinyl albums especially the upcoming 'Kintsugi' by Death Cab for Cutie because the white and gold vinyl is awesome and the slip mat addition is great.

[IvanIvanovich]

One of the biggest issues I have, is doing so is often the only reasonable way to even obtain some content. There are too many out of print content, and finding rare out of print VHS tapes, vinyl, books, whatever can be a real expensive pain in the ass. In which case, it's all used and you're not paying anything to those that originally created it anyway. In which case some people would argue that the used market for physical media is equally as bad, since they aren't getting paid again for it on each sale.
Additionally we still have loads of absurdly antiquated regional distribution, where the only way to get things semi-legitimately is to import them. In which case you then face annoying region lock DRM and other stupidly unnecessary things.
If it wasn't for someone making a digital rip and posting it, it would essentially be inaccessible. This is the reason I really dislike the present copyright and big media distribution systems. You have them reinstating copyrights indefinitely, then at the same time refusing to keep content available in current useable formats, or refusing to make it available outside of one small geographic area for no good reason. If the system wasn't so broken, and set for only sole purpose of protecting rich guys then all that stuff should have gone public domain. If someone else wants to take the risk to remaster something and re-release it on BD or whatever they should be able to do so. Art should be created to benefit us all culturally, not locked up and controlled by the rich. Studios/publishers have loads of media masters that haven't been viewed/heard in generations, or in some cases ever.
Copyright should be trashed, and set to allow them a definite ONE TIME fixed period of something like 5-10 years maximum to recoup their investment and opportunity to make any profit, then go public domain. Until things get more reasonable I will continue to acquire what I wish by whatever means.

As far as people that feel it's wrong on 'moral/ethical' grounds... I say it's more wrong for them to waste multi-billions on garbage media, and in some cases not even releasing it afterwards when there are real problems all around the world that could make much more effective use of those resources. It's a huge joke. It's too bad they can't do better things for all mankind instead.

[berserkfan]

BTW, for those who have never watched it, Transformers is strictly a movie for the male 15-25 year old demographic with a maximum IQ of 100 and maximum education of high school. For all older or more intelligent/ educated males, I would recommend porn.

QFT

And Transformers 4: Age of extinction is the only movie that I just shut off and walked away from. It was even worse than a million ways to die in the west. And the only reason that I didn't walk out on that one was because it was in cinema and I didn't want to waste my money that way.
[/quote]



Seriously, if you're a working adult, you probably have better things to do. Nowadays I will happily lose some money just to save some time.

[Lanx]

Seriously, if you're a working adult, you probably have better things to do. Nowadays I will happily lose some money just to save some time.

an Adult would type the name of the movie into google and on the right hand side immediately see 4 different ratings from different aggregator review sites such as imdb/metacritic/rottentomatoes etc. while you should judge media for yourself, the best use of these review/critic sites is to NOPE NOPE NOPE, avoid crappy movie like the plague.