Quote from: Dreamframer on June 06, 2010, 12:40

I know that piracy is a taboo for you, and I understand you can't understand that here, piracy is still welcomed. People here don't give a dam for your copyright. You still know only one side.

Uh, we understand it.  You just seem to enjoy writing about how the cultural sense of entitlement justifies it because they aren't willing to pay for it, while we all think the pirates are a bunch of thieving *insult removed*.

Guys, you know what. My, or your posting won't change anything. I will let it this way, because there is no point to argue anymore. I was irritated by Microbius's post how madelaide is hypocrite, and I was trying to say how funny and childish this kind of comment looks to someone who lives here. It actually looks more like a comment from someone who just fall from Mars.... I mean, she is a hypocrite because she posted a video that someone posted on youtube with copyrighted track. Haha, c'mon.
The message on the video was way more important than those few dollars the guy who owns the copyright for the track should get. Maybe we should burn her as a witch, like a Giordano Bruno when he said the Earth is rounded... it was illegal to say such things in that time....

You have to look a little deeper Microbius. Piracy is illegal, but some people are taking a good advantage of it. Those people are smart.
You can think of me whatever you want. I don't care. The fact is that this thread is read 3187 times till now, and only you and I are the only ones who are exchanging thoughts here.

I've been reading the thread but haven't said anything yet. Just watching you two have at it. I understand what both of you are saying...

But I will put my two cents in now. Now matter how you justify it, think that something good is coming from it, proving that the kids who pirated software are now fine, upstanding citizens working in Silicon Valley...it is STILL WRONG AND STILL ILLEGAL. And those of us who pay for software are now paying through our noses, partly because of piracy (and partly because of greed).

Any kind of crime can be justified using your logic, dreamframer. The kid who steals the stereo from your car needed money for a fix, therefore it's ok. The kid who shoplifts a CD really wants to be like his friends so it's OK. The bank robber who needed a quick getaway and stole your car, well it's ok, he needed a ride and didn't have one of his own. Can I hack into your account and steal your commissions? I'm unemployed and I really need the money, therefore it will be ok. I don't think I need to go on.

There is right and wrong in the world. Every person decides which way to go. And those who choose to steal are WRONG. No matter how you justify it, it is wrong and illegal.

edit: the fact that this thread has been read many times yet no one has posted only means that 3180+ people have something more constructive to do than argue about right or wrong. 

I know it's wrong, but it will egsists for years more, and you can just adjust to it and take advantage of it if possible. That's what I'm saying.
People in China live poor lives and don't pay for software and that wont change very soon. People in America live rich lives, and have to pay for software. That's reality.

We all have a choice. I know it's wrong and there isn't any way I am going to adjust to it or take advantage of it. And to me, it's not a question of money because a person with no conscience can be filty, stinking rich and yet still do the wrong thing.

As far as people in America living rich lives, well, that is certainly true for some but our unemployment rate is at an all-time high and there are plenty of homeless people wandering the streets. I agree we are not as poor as some third world nations, but if it keeps going the way it is, we certainly will be there, with only 2 classes of people, those with and those without. I am guessing when and if that does happen, there will be a drastic increase in all kinds of thievery because it will become a necessity for living, like the point you are trying to make.

Sorry to say this, but you guys know nothing about third world. You still think people from poor countries will accept the thing that pirated stuff is illegal, and tso they will teach their children that they are not allowed to see what's new in Hollywood? Lol
Crazy.
If you think people just need food and shelter, send your kids here, to grow year by year with no window to the outer world. There is enough food here, and they will have shelter and place to sleep.
I bet they will start downloading Hollywood movies very soon.

You are trying to convince me that pirated software is illegal. Why you are doing this anyway? Do you think I don't know that? What is actually your point?
Don't you understand I am trying to justify my people because I know that we have so many talented people, and those talents would be totally wasted if they didn\t see the world thanks to piracy. Now we have more people outside our country than in it. Only in Chicago more than 500 000 Serbs live, and in our country there are only 6 000 000 left. We are leaving the country because it's impossible to live normally here. We also want to watch movies, listen to the music and do other stuff all people are doing. I also plan to leav the country and to take my son with me, because I don't want him to grow up in a society where he can't earn more than 300 euros per month.
I don't believe you really think people would accept the fact that they deserved just to eat, sleep and work, just because they are unlucky to be born in the wrong country. People are already disappointed enough because their own government is screwing their lives for decades. 20 years of my life I spent in the kind of crisis that you'll never see. All that time I knew the modern world egists out there. I knew it, and I would like to see the one who will stop me trying to sneek into it, at least through pirated movies and music.
I learned Russian language in my school, because there was no English. But I managed to learn English by my self exactly by listening western music and watching movies. Do you really thing I would accept to make boudaries around my self because it's illegal to listen foreign music in a country under embargo??
6 years I was traveling in a train for 4-5 hours every weekend on one leg, standing to finish my veterinarian studies. And after it I was faced to the situation that I can't find a job.
The country is falling appart all my life. First, my country was SFR Yugoslavia, than it fell appart and became SR Yugoslavia, than it become Serbia and Montenegro, and then it became Serbia. I was born in one country, grew up in another, served the army in third one, and now I live in fourth country.
Did you hear that 13 Chinese people commited a suicide in an iPod ffactory in last 2 months?

http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2010/05/26/foxconn_no_suicide_pledge

Do you think they will let their children to stay blind and to work for Apple for generations without a posibillity to see the outter world?
I think no. They will do everything to show their children everything, through pirated movies, music, and everything else, and they don't care about anyones copyright, or intelectual property. You have to understand that. Even if you don't, even if you keep saying it's wrong, you have to know it's wrong just for you. For them it's totally right, because there is no other way. Some people simply don't have a choice.
Even poorest people from western world can collect more money by begging on the street than these people can earn by working 12 hours a day.

I make my living with microstock, you could too as you can obviously afford a computer, software and camera equipment good enough to.
I also live in a country where the cost of living is much, much higher than yours. So to recap I make my living doing something where you would get exactly the same wages as I do only you would be in a country where those wages would mean you could afford to buy pretty much whatever you wanted.
You need to stop feeling so sorry for yourself and just get on with it, and maybe stop encouraging your country men to steal your work.
I thought we moved on when Marx explained that we are people living among people. Your people's society doesn't make them steal, they are their society. Your government sucks? you are your government!  Get out there and start making the world a better place instead of whining endlessly and excusing any kind of immorality by how hard your life is. You should try living in sub-Saharan Africa.

As someone who has just been reading the back-and-forth exchange between Microbius and Dreamframer, here's my take...

Started out completely in the Microbius camp... I've agreed ideologically with everything he has said.

But by the last posts in this chain I've become convinced that it is impossible to judge Dreamframer without having lived his life in the difficult conditions he's been trapped in.  No, I don't condone piracy under any conditions, and it sounds like he also knows it's wrong.  It sounds like he wants to live the life the rest of us enjoy, and he's desperately trying to get himself and his son out of the country and into a life that makes it possible to enjoy the things we all can easily buy without even considering piracy.

Those of us in comfortable, safe, less-corrupt areas of the world can sit back and tell him how to live, how to affect change, etc. have no idea what it would take to actually act on those lofty ideals.  You're telling him that he is his government and he should change it if he doesn't like it?  Easy for you to say, and probably an easy way for him to get killed and make his son a fatherless child.

As someone who has just been reading the back-and-forth exchange between Microbius and Dreamframer, here's my take...

Started out completely in the Microbius camp... I've agreed ideologically with everything he has said.

But by the last posts in this chain I've become convinced that it is impossible to judge Dreamframer without having lived his life in the difficult conditions he's been trapped in.  No, I don't condone piracy under any conditions, and it sounds like he also knows it's wrong.  It sounds like he wants to live the life the rest of us enjoy, and he's desperately trying to get himself and his son out of the country and into a life that makes it possible to enjoy the things we all can easily buy without even considering piracy.

Those of us in comfortable, safe, less-corrupt areas of the world can sit back and tell him how to live, how to affect change, etc. have no idea what it would take to actually act on those lofty ideals.  You're telling him that he is his government and he should change it if he doesn't like it?  Easy for you to say, and probably an easy way for him to get killed and make his son a fatherless child.

I think you have summed up both sides fairly. I am in Microbius' camp in that I do not believe that stealing under any circumstance is OK. I am in dreamframer's camp because it is easy for me say, not ever having to live in such a country. I admire dreamframer's courage to want something better for himself.

Boo-hoo, I can't pay $25 to buy "Alice in Wonderland"?  Tough.

Again, we _get_ it.  They're poor and have no sense of property.  We get it.  They're thieves because they're entitled to a life of $2 Hollywood movies and free software.  Check.  We all understand.  Doesn't think we have to accept it as the way things should be just because they use their stolen warez to come and program software we all use (which I'm not exactly buying into).

Seems to me that there is nothing more I can add on the "piracy justifiable or not" argument.  It has all been said by people more articulate and passionate about it than me. 

I must say that I am moved by your descriptions of what life is like in Serbia, Ivan.  It isn't all sunshine and roses here in the US anymore, if it ever was.  But I certainly have not had to deal with the level of uncertainty and widespread societal corruption you have.  I can't imagine having to live that way and I admire you for holding on to your values and doing your best to get yourself and your son out of there.

Wherever you wind up I wish you great success.  And maybe your grandchildren will be in a position to grow up without ever knowing the kind of hardships you have.   

Well Lisa, my aunt with her family moved to Austria, my uncles are in Switzerland and Australia, my best man is in Pennsylvania, and hopefully I will live in California, where you can buy a snowball maker http://www.amazon.com/Sno-Baller-Snowball-Maker-Colors-Vary/dp/B000II4JJ2 lol
I was in the middle of the revolution, fighting with a police in Belgrade in year 2000, when we deposed from power our ex president and dictator Slobodan Milosevis. And then, I was growing a hope the things will change drastically. And things are changing slowly, but life is too short. I can't wait anymore. My son is already 7 y.o.

I'm sorry I sounded like I support piracy. I was just trying to justify people who deserve a better life, but they can't afford it because someone from above is stealing from them every day, because I am part of such people in some way. Several years ago, politicians were buying people's votes on presidential elections  for 3 kilos (6 pounds) of sugar. In that situation, who can expect of those people to care about copyright and those things. That was the time when everything started to fall apart.
I believe similar situation is in all ex communists countries. Russia is the first of them to start rising from the mud (or maybe it's just Moscow, who knows)

I believe 90% of piracy is present among poor people. That's why I said the companies are not at the real lost. They could never really sell their products to poor people. And those poor people are not poor because they don't want to work, but because their countries can't make enough jobs for them. Very few of them have luck to escape.
In my country there is a name for phenomenon of smart people leaving the country, and it's called "brain drain". Only now, after so many years of brain drain government is trying to stimulate those scientists who left the country to come back.

Thank you for your wishes!

Quote from: Dreamframer on June 07, 2010, 15:46

I believe 90% of piracy is present among poor people. That's why I said the companies are not at the real lost. They could never really sell their products to poor people.

That isn't really the point.  I don't want someone getting my images from some pirate on cd, and its ok, just because they weren't going to license them anyway.

I've given up on this thread, it seems a sad story is worth a hundred facts or coherent arguments, something politicians worked out a long time ago.

My reading of this thread is that Ivan is a bit bemused by the amount of energy people here waste on righteous indignation over an issue that isn't going to go away any time soon and probably doesn't have a significant impact in real terms. It's a pity it has degenerated into finger-pointing and name-calling.

bump!