Moral Quandary - Should it be OK to pirate Discontinued or De-listed software?

Should it be OK to pirate Discontinued or De-listed software?

  • Total voters
    177
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Bonfires Down said:
No shit it's ok. I also think it's ok to pirate any game if someone genuinely can't afford it.
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Lol anybody can claim that they can't afford games. My solution is Gamepass for day 1 and sales for the rest. It's not like I'll die from having no food on the table if I buy games but I don't think almost anything is a worth the $95 I have to pay.
 
The mere existence of Outrun 2006 makes the answer obvious.

Should segas greatest ever racer be consigned to oblivion because of licensing?
 
Who would try to even sue you for illegally downloading something, if the company makes no money off of it or do they still pay lawyers to find and sue people, even though the games makes no more revenue?
 
pqueue said:
no. it is not moral however you want to try to redefine and make yourself feel better.

you have no right to something because it is unavailable for purchase.

just admit it is theft, and you are okay with that and move on.
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I don't think it is quite as cut and dried as all that. Abandonware may not have legal standing but it does morally. You really think it is better to have old arcade games cease to exist once the last working hardware dies? You think that is doing right by the original creators?
 
I think it's wrong, but if you feel like playing 1080 Avalanche and dont want to buy a GameCube and the disc, you shouldn't feel bad for emulating.

I do think that you should use legal options if available 100% of the time though, e.g. if 1080 Avalanche comes to NSO.
 
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DonkeyPunchJr said:
Copyright infringement is not the same thing as theft. "But what if the value of the thing you steal is really small?" Uhh it's still theft.
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Youre just defining the legal term for it. If I steal a photo from you it's also copyright infringement (without you copyrighting) but it can also be data "theft". That's beside the point. I'm just saying the material cost of the disc is nothing but its contents are being "stolen".
DonkeyPunchJr said:
Anyway we are talking about abandonware. Software that was commercially available but not anymore, because it's out of print or for some dead platform or whatever. You didn't need to muddy the waters by comparing it to copying someone's personal private data off their phone. Come on. Ethically those are completely different things.
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Are they that different though? That was his point, that just because you pull or refuse to sell those CDs it doesn't mean you now have free reign to take that CD or download it:

HerjansEagleFeeder said:
If an artist would pull his CD from store shelves you'd still consider it theft to just take it from some warehouse where the leftovers are stored. The mere fact of missing availability on the market doesn't somehow magically make it not theft when you steal it.
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The point being made is that you can't really make the call whether the content is of use to others anymore or not because you don't own it in either case.
Take some delisted game for example. That may be "abandoned" simply because of licensing within the game. Now somebody owns that content even if it is missing "availability". Doesn't really give you free reign to copy that content. Legally it isn't a grey area at all, it's copyright infringement or theft just like me downloading some picture of a flower you might have taken is. I get that the "harm" is really not that significant.
 
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Well, this thread has more or less clarified where the vast majority of people lie in regards to this vast moral quandary.

Also, I feel like threads like this are a trap. They will always devolve into two or three people arguing with the rest of the thread.
 
I wouldn't think twice about it personally.

And if I had made a product myself that the publisher discontinued and didn't offer anywhere I would just be happy that people are still getting exposed to it and are enjoying it at all.

It has to absolutely suck to work on a project like, say, that Coyote Vs. Acme movie and watch Warner Bros. just use it to get a tax write-off and never release it to the public at all.
 
Piracy is always the best way to go because developer these days could suddenly update your old game 10 years later unless the game has no DRM like the ones in GOG. These updates almost always break mods and there is almost no way you could avoid them. Valve till this day still won't implement function where you could play a game with old patch. Developer has to put older patches as beta for players to choose such option and only a few devs do this. It fucking sucks.
 
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