I believe, that if the developer/builder/what have you no longer makes a profit off of the product, (i.e. they are no longer in business, or no longer ship the product in any way, even through download)  Then piracy should not apply to the ripping of the software.  The only people that could possibly be losing money are pawn shops and game-trader stores that take obsolete games.  Neither has rights to the software, they just re-sell it, with no ties to the developers.

Just out of curiosity, why did you come up with this post?

-Twilight Storm

So this for some paper or something, or just a curiosity?

-Twilight Storm

If you're pirating Donkey Kong 64 or Pokemon Crystal you're not doing anything that bad. If you're pirating the SC2 Beta and playing offline, you're not doing anything that bad. If you're pirating current software/music, it's slightly bad. It's still not that bad IMO. It is not stealing, you don't take anything from anyone. You just unfairly take someones hard work without compensation. They don't lose anything, but, of course, if everyone pirated everything, then the producer of whatever product you are pirating would lose the time and work and money they put in to create it. If you're basing your morality off of the writings of Emmanuel Kant, pirating is definitely bad. In my mind, pirating music is sort of a meritocracy that I control. Entertainers do not deserve the salaries they currently enjoy.

thats shoplifting a lot harder to get away with then to pirate something of the internet, youtube seems to be just as bad as torrents... google is almost the same as pirate bay.

Whatever helps you sleep at night.

-Twilight Storm

Boom........Headshot! 

Copyright infringement = illegal/unethical does not => copyright infringement = theft

and

Copyright infringement != theft does not => copyright infringement = legal/ethical

Personally, for the most part(1) I respect copyright of any work under 15 years (2), but anything older than that and screw them, legalities be damned. Though I don't really care for NES games and such, and most of the good DOS games are freeware anyways (OMF:2097 ) so in practice I don't do much, if any, actual copyright infringement.

(1) getting a second license of Windows to run on a VM or buying a second copy of PvZ to run on my notebook do not qualify as "reasonable".

(2) the lenght of copyright that's been deemed by scientific studies to be the optimal to maximize the amount of work being created, and incidentally only one year longer than the original duration of copyright in the US.

Pirating is stealing..Thats is why its called pirating. Because pirates steal.  However i give applause to anyone who does it to EA... They deserve it considering they just pirate ideas for games and if the person complains they buy them out.

Its definitely not the same as copying someone's homework..   Your friend lets you copy it for one thing.  Also it might seem ok to you because you see the big faceless corporation but you dont see the programmers that are making 25-30 grand a year that end up losing theyre job because the game they made didnt gross enough because of pirating .. then they cant afford health insurance for theyre kid and when they catch something really bad get refused care and then maybe die from it... Or at the very least can't afford food or lose thier house.I know that sounds extreme but its definitely possible.  Still look like homework to you?   Oh . And I dont care what any company thinks of me.. didnt you see the comment about EA????

And if the game is so horrible it brings you no pleasure; then what?

If the company is reasonable like Stardock, try to return if. If not, then don't buy a product from them again.

And since I seem to have taken the response out of context - people don't pirate games they think they won't like. But pirating a game you dont like doesn't make it any more right.

Yeah. It's also possible that, by you writing your post you've denied me valuable study time that I would've used to study mathematics instead, leading to my discovery of a brand new theory that leads to a scientific revolution, that'd ultimately lead to a cure for cancer and save millions of lives. Therefore, by your writing of this post, you've killed millions. Extreme, but it's definitely possible.

Don't be so freaking melodramatic, will ya? treat such far-fetched, edge scenarios as statistical improbabilities and just stick to the 'normal' stuff if you want to argue from the consequences. And again, "copyright infringement" being "wrong" does not imply it being the same as "theft", otherwise you'd be guilty of rape given what you've done to the English language in this thread.

And to those who argue from the notion that 'copyright' is a 'right' of the authors, please stop it. That idea's logical conclusion is that the rights should therefore be permanent (Einstein doesn't stop being the father of Relativity just because he's dead, does he?), and *that* idea was so utterly moronic and dangerous even the US' founding fathers prohibited it in the US constitution explicitly. Copyright is a time-limited monopoly society grants creators of artistic works as incentive to create them in the first place, and while an argument could be made that such thinking would logically lead to copying anything still for sale being invariably 'wrong', regardless of its age, that same argument could be used to determine that copying anything that's *not* on sale is invariably 'right' again independantly from its age. If you really believe that, cool, but please think of the consequences of the arguments you use to support your position.