Anyone know if Civ5 has been pirated yet?

ddd123 said:

wtf are you talking about?
you search pirate things on google news?

hope fbi is not searching bin laden home in there too...

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Nope they're using Google Earth

Moderator Action: <snip>

Mentioning pirating sites, even in code, is not permitted.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

blind biker said:

The Internet grants you access to all that material. Make your own conclusions.

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The same way a copy machine grants you access to illegally producing copies of, say, money.

Just because you can use something illegal, doesn't mean it is.
Torrent sites on the other hand, can be shown to intentionally providing access to illegal material. The intent part is key here. If it wasn't, buying a gun, planning a murder in detail and shooting the victim would be sentenced the same as someone accidentally shooting someone while hunting (i.e. pulling a Cheney).
Intent is very important in just about any criminal legislation, and with good reason.

Andvare said:

Torrent sites on the other hand, can be shown to intentionally providing access to illegal material. The intent part is key here.

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Lets go back 300 years ago. Here we have this slave-owner who legally bought a slave on the slave market. "Fair and square", he even has a contract for it, valid in most courts in the world.

And then you have these nasty pirates who captured his ship and liberated the slave. Highly illegal, amoral activity. Theft of property! What a bunch vicious people these pirates are!

Actual game developers or musicians or actors are less protected by laws than you think. And these laws need to change, to protect both the actual manufacturer and the consumer. Current laws are way too much in favor of mediators between these two parties.

That's exactly what happened with slavery. New laws cut out the ridiculously high-profit middle-men and former slavers were directly hired and paid by the contractor, while the state regulated the rest (education, rights, convictions etc.).

Even if I have my personal opinion on Civilization V, I'd always buy the game directly from Firaxis. No more bloated % + % + % + % + % from all the middle-men, with all their shady laws, regulations and contracts.

So you would prefer to buy from Steam than a retailer?

Senethro said:

So you would prefer to buy from Steam than a retailer?

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I consider Steam to be a retailer as long as their prices remain this high.

Andvare said:

Torrent sites on the other hand, can be shown to intentionally providing access to illegal material.

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Nope, they can't. They are wholly agnostic to the content that is torrented.

Please, what is a torrent?

Bibor said:

I consider Steam to be a retailer as long as their prices remain this high.

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Ok, so you're most interested in acting as a rational consumer than buying where the greatest share goes to the developer and the most middlemen are cut. Thats perfectly reasonable.

Pay2Play or Play4Pay or even, 1Plays< = >1Pays... consumers are caught up in such an equation much more extensively than what Distributors (or as wisely described above with the Middle-Men analogy!) would have us believe.

The hell is with those stupid numbers in the name? I avoid anything that uses numbers instead of letters as a rule.

Senethro said:

Ok, so you're most interested in acting as a rational consumer than buying where the greatest share goes to the developer and the most middlemen are cut. Thats perfectly reasonable.

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You have to understand that I don't have too many options here in Croatia.
I can either buy a game at one (and only one) brick&mortar retail store chain OR purchase a game licence from one of the online retailers.

In Croatia we:
- don't have iTunes or any similar method of buying audio and video legaly online
- have to pay hefty tax on anything from Amazon or any other intl. online store (import)

I can purchase from Steam without importa tax because it doesn't involve a physical medium (i.e. CD or DVD).

Croatia is a small country and, you know, everybody knows everybody in IT. We have a games developent company called CroTeam. Merging my retail experiences with that of how much CroTeam earned from selling their first Serious Sam, I'm pretty sure they could've distributed digitally the game for 1/4 of the publisher's recommended retail price. Or keep that much more in their own pockets. Obviously, such methods of shipping were sci-fi back then in Croatia.

What's worse, computer game prices are tuned for USA and Western Europe where salaries are quadruple of these in Croatia, so buying games is still pretty darn expensive for me.

blind biker said:

Nope, they can't. They are wholly agnostic to the content that is torrented.

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Please do tell that to the many sites that have been taken down for just that.
An inactive stance against illegal action on your site, have been shown to be enough.
Like it or not.

PrinceScamp said:

The hell is with those stupid numbers in the name? I avoid anything that uses numbers instead of letters as a rule.

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Duh... with a Member code such as <3 Canada <3 right on your own Forum Sidebar -- i dunno, you seem to enjoy Numbers. But i'm trolling (also), sorry.

Moderator Action: Glad to see that you can identify your own errors. Stay on topic please.

Zyxpsilon said:

Duh... with a Member code such as <3 Canada <3 right on your own Forum Sidebar -- i dunno, you seem to enjoy Numbers. But i'm trolling (also), sorry.

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First of all, that isn't a member code.

Secondly, that is a symbolic representation, not a replacement for a letter.

Not too bad !!
I am sure such a thread is VERY carefully monitored by several moderators, and we are now page 9, 176 posts, with only a few warnings when it was just about to go out of bounds...

... but what is the definition of "out of bounds"? It can sometimes be difficult to define.
I give my own example.
I live in a poor country (Mozambique), and often stay in "the bush", far away in remote provinces.
Internet: I access it through a public computer, or work (protected network). I can not connect my home/gaming computer to any internet.
Anyway, there is barely water here (just got water again this morning after 3 days without - good that I have a 1500 L. tank -) and electricity 75% of the time, and oscillating from 180 to 280 volts!...
Civilization 5?
I bought a DVD from Amazon.co.uk, and picked it up while going back to France for a couple of weeks.
Back "home", I discovered I could not install it in my computer, as I could not access internet with my home computer.
My solution? I used a pirated version provided by a Thai colleague/friend who got it day 1 on DVD from a mall in central Bangkok, and I started to play with his version, my beautiful official civ5 DVD box laughing at me right now in front of me...

Am I a pirate?
I guess not. I bought the game. I have the proof of purchase, and the goods. I use my right to play as I consider I have a license for it.

Am I wrong? Am I right? I am not sure it is easy to define clearly what is out of bounds sometimes...

I bet Amazon has no problem taking 50$ for a computer game from people who's average monthly salary is a 100$. But that's legal!

I also bet a beggar on streets on NY can earn more money than five doctors of medicine in Mozabique.

Yeah I'm being obnoxious.

jprc:

Only the law "of place of action" ( Moçambique) may say if you performed or not a theft of intelectual rights.
If no new law about the subject in the last 35/36 years...then the answer is no, because the right
to use the program is granted to the person (you) and not to the metal/plastic/radiation/whatever
of the media/device.

Out of curiosity, whats the rule for that in America? I remember a guy lost his morrowind CD once and copied it from mine. Back in the days of morrowind I just assume it's fine, but assuming the game were released these days?