You forgot the

Self Ritious:  Those who do it because they believe they have the right to.

Oblivious:  Those who were introduced to piracy by one of any of the other categories and just sawit as free games without thinking of where they come from.

I agree with your categories tho.  And as long as the internet exists, there will be no stopping piracy.  Well...I should say, as long as the synergetic relationship between the internet and law-benders(lawyers) exists, piracy cannot be stopped because there will be some way it can be brought into being that would "Violate our rights" if it were banned.  I'm all for having rights, nobody should be able to oppress anyone.

Unless that one is a lawyer...in which case, they shall be stoned.

-Twilight Storm | My life for the Dahkri

I find it sad when I have to go to pirate sites to get cracks for games that I purchased. I have several games installed on my machine at any one time and on my laptop. When I'm out an about or even at home I don't want to have to constantly swap out CDs just to play a game. This is especially true with a laptop where you don't want to carry around every disk for every game you have installed on it just to play.

Online verifications are also annoying cause again with laptops you might not always be in a wifi location. And in some cases your primary gaming machine might not have Internet connection. Because despite what a lot of the media has to say about social gaming there is still a huge market for single player games. If you take MMORPGs out of the equation single player games far over shadow multi-player games. So the you should be connected no matter what excuse is rather hollow. Even though most games have multi-player options they are still played in large part as single player games by most consumers.

As for pirating in general it's like trying to stop the tides. It cost a lot of time and money when in the end it would be been easier and cheaper to simply go with the flow. I mean companies thinking they can stop piracy is about the same as them thinking they can stop groups like 4Chan or Anonymous from stirring up stuff. (Like how 4Chan crashed Twitter.)

This is the internet age and their stuck in a pre-internet age mind set. All it takes is one person with a lot of knowledge and time on their hands who is motivated solely out of personal acomplishment and peer recognition to crack something. Then they share it with people who share it with others and it goes viral. Soon it's all over the web for people to download and sure enough they do. The vast majority of people who then download the game are simply looking for a free game to play and would never have purchased the game in the first place so it's not really lost sales. However it is impossible to tell what percentage of those pirates would of actually purchased the game had it not been available for sale.

Instead of worrying about piracy companies should instead think of how they can improve customer service. Like when the music industry finally caved in on their fight against Mp3s and piracy. They realized they would make so much more money by working with companies like Apple and setting up sites such as iTunes to sell the songs. As customers what easy access to usability for what they purchase. And less DRM with easier access to software purchasing like Steam, Impulse, D2D, and so on are the real way to go.

 

To your first paragraph, I recomend a program called Alcohol 120% if you're just not wanting to carry a bunch of discs around with you when you travel.  That negates the need for piracy since you should already own the discs.  I use it to back up all my discs.

-Twilight Storm | My life for the Dahkri

Alcholol is not free as I recall. So I have to pay for another program to get software I already paid for to work??

Also I'm not pirating the whole software. I'm just downloading the cracked EXE files so it no longer checks the disc since like I said I already own the software so I don't need anything else.

Or download the free trial for your immediate backup purposes...and reinstall said trial as needed.  That part of the software is free the way they've got it set up, there are just a lot of cool features you can't get without buying the full program.

-Twilight Storm | My life for the Dahkri

I don't believe this is justification for piracy at all.  Many games today do not have Demos - which in many cases actually helps them sell because the game is absolute rubbish - however YouTube offers hours of gameplay footage of even the most obscure games and between the numerous reviews and forums you'll find a wide variety of opinions to gauge the qualities of the title in question.  Not sure? Then don't buy.


I agree with this in part - and I say in part because technically it's not piracy because they're 'cracking' a purchased copy of the game to actually make it work.  I believe this behaviour is acceptable as numerous forms of DRM are quite harmful or prevent the game from working at all for purchasing customers, like Assassin's Creed 2.


This is also not justification because if it's not worth your money, then you don't buy it, and if you don't want to buy it then you forfeit the right to own it.  I don't pirate a movie because I don't like the run time, or the price of the DVD, and the same thing applies to games.  I don't like the trend we're seeing of games costing more and more and taking less and less time to finish, with more and more focus on adding the long-term stuff via DLC.  So you know what I do? I don't buy any of it.


Sure, I can agree with that.


In my opinion, they just need to make better games with a focus of value.  I recently downloaded Perfect Dark for the Xbox Live Arcade.  The game, that 10 year old game that I paid 10 bucks for, has more value than both Modern Warfares combined.  The single player game, the multiple difficulty levels, the challanges, the firing range, the hidden bits, the multiplayer challenges; we're talking 30 hours of gameplay minimum so it was worth every bit of that 10 bucks and then some!  Modern Warfare 2 costs AU$120.00 new for the Xbox 360 and contains a 5 hour single player campaign, 2 hours worth of Special Forces missions and buggy, glitchy, laggy multiplayer.  If Modern Warfare 2 contained a 20 hour single player campaign, 10 hours of challanges and rock solid multiplayer I think more people would be inclinded to buy it.  For example, I was rather excited about the new Splinter Cell: Conviction.  Then it released with a 5 hour single player campaign, a 2 hour co-op campaign and various multiplayer modes minus the fun modes from previous titles.  Needless to say, I won't be purchasing the game.

I agree the no demo excuse is lame. I mean if there is no demo and they want to "try" it but get the full game instead during the "trail" then how many of them are really going to go out and buy it? A very small minority will actually go and buy it but it's most likely because of some MP aspect or something that has a CD Key verification. Like people still buying Diablo 2 to play on B.net cause it checks the CD Key. Which I think is perfectly viable DRM setup that does not hassle paying customers.

I also agree here that limited finances are no excuse. It's like saying "Officer I had to steal that stuff cause I could not afford to buy it." But at the same time this points to one of the BS excuses companies use to justify DRM by saying they lost sales. Well wake up guys those pirates were never gonna buy your product so making it more difficult for paying customers only serves to alienate your customers and drive them away, some of which might actually become pirates just to spite you.

 

Well they already trying to make it so only paying customers get some "useful" stuff through the first day DLC when you "register" your game. Bioware did it with Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2. Problem is I heard that even the DLC got pirated. All programs are just bits of data on your computer and any bits of data can be copied. It is impossible to prevent this and thus it is impossible to stop piracy. Sure they can make it more difficult but in the end it also makes it more difficult for the end user.

As for the "focus on value" aspect I think they already are. But the "value" is on their side not the customer side. Look at the DLC for Dragon Age where you pay like 5-10% the cost of a full game but only get like 2-3% of the play time of the original game if even that. That is a great "value" for the company as they can pump it out a lot cheaper then the full game and it helps keep the game alive. Plus later they can resell Gold/Platinium versions that include all the DLC. Great way to milk the customers not so great of a "value" on the customers side.

Also those old games cost far less for the companies to make back in the day as they had much smaller staffs. Plus since all of the original expense is already paid off it's pure profit at this point. The amount of money it takes to store those files on a system they already have setup and track a new "item" on that system is pennies. Yet they still can sell it and make a ton of money. And even then it maybe a "value" for the customer because they get a game real cheap that has a lot of play value to it but at the same time it's a huge "value" for the company as it's practically all profit.

I do agree though they don't make games like they use that are a real "value" deal for the customer. To many linear stories that are nothing more then long movies. With poor gameplay and zero replayability. So many games are extremely linear and extremely easy that you beat them in a night and it's like why did I waste my money on this? And yes I could use that as a "lame excuse" to pirate games but I don't. If the game isn't worth my money then it also it's worth my TIME. Cause frankly time is a lot more important.

 

EDIT: I tried editing it like 10+ times and it won't seem to accept the first /quote to close the quote. Not sure what's wrong but it seems broken as I removed the whole first quote and it then just quoted the whole 2nd part of the post at that quote spot?!?!

I couldn't agree more.  The problem occurs when companies attempt to apply that same mentality to offline play.  CD Key Generatorss are as common as No-CD Cracks, however they still can't get around online authentication as exampled by many games - the most successful are obviously Starcraft and Diablo II - still selling today because people want to play on offical channels or play online.  Anything more really impacts upon the paying customer and actually provides validation to the pirate's behaviour; they're pirating the game so that they don't have to deal with the bullshit.  In today's world, if PC sales were so low that any PC focused company went bankrupt and saw little to no sales, then the companies would be right.  However, low PC sales are usually the result of many other factors - take Demigods poor launch, for example.  Modern Warfare 2's complete lack of dedicated servers, Assassin's Creed 2's pathetic DRM.

DRM systems like Ubisoft's most recent, which require single player games to be permantly connected to the internet - and the one present in Command and Conquer 4 are examples of the very thing that drives people away from PCs and into the loving arms of Consoles.  I could make a fair argument that companies like Ubisoft and Activison are actually trying to drop support for the PC entirely because it's simply eaiser and cheaper to support Consoles exclusively however the success of titles like World of Warcraft, who's player base is now finally winding down, ensures they'll still try for a piece of the pie.

If they simply dropped the bullshit, they'd see an increase in sales.  EA Games, heavily responsble for the widespread adoption DRM bullshit we see today, are at least learning.  They've stopped using heavily restrictive DRM in their titles, however instead now use launch day and overpriced DLC to gouge their player base, and still have the third worst customer support in the industry with Ubisoft and Capcom ranking first and second respectively.  Activision Blizzard has leap-frogged EA Games for the title of the worst company in the Video Game industry with their blatant overpricing of their titles and DLC and openly admiting they intend to charge more than is fair for everything, clearly adopting the 'anything is worth what the customer will pay' mentality that represents all that is wrong with the world today.  And they have the nerve to claim Pirates are responsible for running the PC Games industry into the ground!? Bah, makes me so angry!


Does it to me too, no idea why.

It's hard to believe that EA was one of the most despised publishers in the industry just a couple of years ago, and Activision and especially Ubisoft managed to beat them for that dishonor in a couple of months. I still have issues with EA's DLC in that 1 in five tries I get the you can't play your saved game because the DLC isn't attached to your account crap with EA, but at least that shouldn't make the games entirely unplayable down the road... just the DLC. I still consider that pretty strong DRM unless they remove it, but then again, I bought them (the games) cheaply for that very reason. Would have paid more otherwise though.

Check your posts in HTML view if that happens. There are usually hidden closing quote tags or HTML div tags as a result of copy/pasting. This can be avoided by pasting anything more than a single paragraph into notepad first, then recopy/paste it into your post to avoid catching unwanted HTML.

abusing a bug in the trial system is, technically, piracy.

Just as using a "student edition" that your friend bought at a local college for 1/10th the price if you are not a student yourself.

It is an excuse, its just not an entirely legitimate one...

As for the no demo thing:

1. System requirements are often exaggerated or lied about.

2. Some games are early alpha, totally unplayable bug ridden monstrosities (and by some games I mean most v1.00 releases today). Companies used to take the approach of getting it right first, then get it out the door and fix later... now? get it out the door and fix never. I have encountered TONS of games that were far too buggy to play.

Example: titan quest solved no less than 5 bugs that caused it to blue screen and over 17 bugs that caused a crash and several that corrupted ALL your user data in the first 6 months of patching. The first release of the game was totally unplayable.

3. Often if a game has no demo it is because the publisher knows it is utter and total rubbish... the reasoning here is "I never ever EVER buy a game without a demo... by downloading it I am giving it a fair chance and there is actually a chance I would buy it"... this has actually been the case with me. On good games by good companies that did not put out demoes. I have a policy that I have not deviated from in over 10 years of never buying a game without the demo first (I learned the hard way)... A lot of those games I downloaded, and then bought within as little as 5 minutes of playing.

I would never have bought them otherwise.

As for the budget issue... remember a lot of pirates are teens who don't have income, period. They get food and shelter but they don't have the option to buy anything. Those are not lost sales, as they become fans they will be doing buying later when they turn adult and get money.

 

There seems to be some misconceptions about DRM here... mainly people are repeating the lies of its supporters... please don't do that. I wrote this about DRM a long time ago:

DRM as a whole is not meant to stop piracy; no form of DRM has ever been effective in stopping piracy, nor has any of it ever been designed in a way that could be effective in stopping piracy. DRM is nothing but a trick to force customers to purchase the same product again and again; which several big DRM advocates (such as the CEO of sony BGM) have publicly declared as their ultimate goal. DRM pushers also came on records as saying that libraries are nothing but massive scale piracy by the government and should thus be shut down. It is no surprise that the library of congress (and many others) have been complaining about their inability to archive works with DRM as libraries are another of the real intended targets of DRM.

Software companies like to pretend that their product is both intellectual property which they license, as well as a physical product which they sell you at the same time. Furthermore, they pretend that somehow the two are combined so that the consumer gets the responsibilities of both and the benefit of neither while they get the benefits of both and the responsibilities of neither.

When you sell a DVD you are transferring a physical product, one that was manufactured, transported, purchased, and has to be disposed of (at taxpayer and environmental expense) when trashed. And has to be repurchased if damaged. Just like a car. This is taking the "physical object" approach.

Digital distribution does not do that. Digital distribution treats it as 100% IP that is licensed to you. You have one lifetime license to use a game/song/movie/program/etc. A license that does not need to be repurchased if your CD is scratched, degrades from age, or otherwise damaged. Therefore you are getting the benefits (you can make copies, transfer devices, and get a duplicate of the data at no cost) and drawbacks (you may not resell it) of the IP licensing method. Which is fair and reasonable; you must remember that in the license approach, you should not have an inherent right to resell an item.

If you wanted the model in which you the consumer could resell the DVD than you have to agree to a model where DVDs can not be duplicated under any circumstances, that the DVD has to be in the drive to run the game. And that if the DVD breaks then you are obligated to buy a new one at full price, even if you already purchased the game/software. This is a ridiculous notion since a DVD is worth under 10 cents, but the software on it is worth at least 50$. It isn't a car, it is a method of transferring the software, which is pure information.

Most unauthorized copying (called piracy by DRM advocates) exists to reclaim the benfits of either the license or the physical property method, but many users forget that if you reclaim both at once than you are going from protecting your rights as a customer and into the realm of thievery (which, ironically, is what the content owners do to you when they claim the rights of both and the responsibilities of neither).

I am very happy with license type digital distribution. Now in a system that no longer tries to exploit me and steal from me (which is exactly what software companies do when they pretend that their product is two different things at once) I am quite satisfied with purchasing software again. This is why services such as impulse are so much better than buying a DVD at the store.

Libraries will never be shut down or branded a form of Piracy.  That's trying to control knowledge, and it's illegal to such a great extent.  Writers KNOW that any books they publish will end up in a library, that's a fact.  They also know that their target audience will likely buy their books assuming the were written well enough. 

-Twilight Storm

While I am happy you are happy with digital distribution, I disagree with your DVD retail point. Impulse goes, so does your games. It really is as simple as that. Any claims to otherwise are nice to hear but 100% not enforceable. Don't believe me, go ahead and read the Terms of Service which the industry will change at whim anyway. This isnt' to say disc versions don't have a disadvantages since they certainly do. I just don't think its reasonable to declare one superior over the others even if one is better suited for you. Hell, because of bm retailers, digital distributions are rarely ever cheaper to purchase despite the drop in actual costs (new releases).

Indeed they do. Like getting old and not working on specific hardware. Just last night I felt like playing UFO: Extraterrestrials. It has a 16 Bit Installer and won't install on Win 7. I had to install the game onto my wife's system (which is one of my systems really) and then transfer the files that were installed into a new folder on my system and then run the game from there. Technically I by-passed the installer to get at the files. I Bought this game....but what I did was still illegal because now it's installed and playable on two of my computers.

Do a Google search for "The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" (ACTA). Depending how the secret negotiations go, you may have to edit your statement above.

 

I tend to agree.  In a dream world, where Digital Distribution works the way it logically should, Digital Distribution would eclipse all other methods of providing a game.  It's cheaper, faster, easily replaced at no additional cost and so forth complete with a written agreement explaining the 'in event of Bankruptcy' plan.  However, we don't live in a dream world, we live in the real world.  In the real world, Digital Distribution is used to charge the retail price for a non-retail product, making the Publishers more money, and is used to inflict regional pricing.  Nearly half the titles available on Impulse are locked to me because of my region; they're locked because I could buy them cheaper on Impulse than I can in retail stores around Australia due to the currency conversion.  Modern Warfare 2 retails new for around AU$80-100.00, and this is reflected on Steam.  If I paid the US Price for the game, with the current exchange rates, I'd be saving nearly $20.00 just for buying digital.  As such, I'll continue to make the majority of my purchases off of Ebay as I find buying UK Versions of titles and shipping them to Australia is cheaper by quite a significant margin.

I accept that when a person steals a game or other intellectual property there is no physical object being stolen.  So why do i call it theft?  because the law says it's theft.  Why does the law call it theft then?  Because something that someone owns is being taken and used without payment or permission given...  why is that important?  Why? Because without law - there is no society (I'll come back to that) -- but in terms of games - does it do any harm? 

Lets say 1 million people buy a game and 1 million people pirate the same game.  Companies will tell you they lost 1 million sales.  But that not 100% true.  Because that infers that every person who stole their game would have purchased their game - if they had not been able to steal it.  I would say that some people who stole the game in that example would have purchased it IF they could not pirate it... so that Unknown percentage is the percentage of sales lost not the whole million...

For arguments sake lets say that 30% of the people who pirated the game would have purchased it,  So does it matter if the other 70% of people (in this example) pirate the game?  I mean they would never have purchased the game anyway right? and they're not getting any physical merchandise - so it doesn't cost the game developer or distribute anything right? So whats the harm? 

So lets say that all 2 million people who played the game decided to make that excuse? they tell themselves, to soothe their conscious, that they would never have brought it anyway - result. No one buys the game the company goes broke,  so where's the harm in that?  The company goes broke, there are less jobs in the workplace, some guy who is a computer software engineer with a diploma from MIT is working on minimum wage managing a 7/11.  I think we can all agree under that, very unlikely scenario that very REAL harm would be done...  But that's a really unrealistic scenario!  But does anyone know exactly what number of games any given company needs to sell to stay profitable?  To stay in business? To employ peoples husbands, wives, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers? or are software pirates just playing Russian roulette with the software company and peoples lives...

Lets face it companies exist to make money... the good ones also exist to create / do something the people who own them, run them, work in them love to do...  Companies know that a percentage of people would buy their game IF they couldn't pirate it.  So as they want to make money - which is at least part of the reason that they are in business and they can't stay in business unless they make money... 

The software companies and more likely the distributors try and find ways to stop the software from being stolen.  Which as we all know pirates get around.  But the effect is that $Money$ is spent to stop piracy.  That money comes from somewhere...  The people who Pay for the games..  Us...  Prices get higher and DRM, Protection etc get more extreme. 

Once upon a time I could buy a game and install it as often as I wanted, no matter how many times i upgraded my computer...  Now i don't buy games because I notice i only get 3 installs - why on earth would I pay nearly $100 Australian to own a disk that I can only install on a computer 3 times?  I mean I upgrade my computer once or twice a year - so I'm actually renting the game not buying it.  So i don't buy it - some people would see that as a reason to pirate it and say "the software company made me do it"  either way - the company makes less money -  so they charge more for their games and crack down on piracy even more.  Endless cycle of rising prices...

So pirates think they do no harm - but they harm the whole industry one way or another the companies and the players.  Basically software pirates are PARASITES feeding off the game industry making games more expensive for the rest of us and making more draconian software protection more viable and that also harms us,  people who buy games.

As has already been said... whatever helps you sleep at night.   Whatever excuse you feel you need to make to allow yourself to do what ever you want to do... remember I said I'd get back to the no law, No society - if every one made whatever excuse they needed to make to allow them selves to do whatever they wanted to do -  were would the world be?

I think the primary problem with using statistics like this, even though I know its just being pulled out of the air for example sake, is that the reverse is rarely talked about at all. So these company throw on heavy DRM schemes that punish paying customers, keep discs from playing in old machines, force people who got in on the early digi music releases to buy their tracks again, prevent different regions from playing each other and, my favorite, force you to stay online at all times because infrastructure around the world is so stable and cheap that we shoudl all have no problem with it. This might look handy in the short-term, heck the pencil pushes might love it but it's all short-term. I no longer buy Ubisoft titles, not at all. I won't buy them for the PC, which has the DRM, or the console I have which doesn't. I've written them off. After watching people fill the forums up with problems playing Avatar, which is suspected but not verified to be DRM related, do you know what my interest in getting a bluray player is right now... zilch. Clearly they are not screwing around with the technology yet, and unlike my PC, I dont' intend to upgrade my tv and its supporting hardware every couple of years. I hold onto these things for a long time.

As for the law, sometimes, it needs to broken. Laws are dynamic, not static. I am not saying that piracy is that case, but I do think everything to do with copyright material is severely broken and titled in the favor of the copyright holders to the point that there is no point is targeting piracy until that is fixed.

I agree with you -  from a pencil pusher point of view it might make sense but it really makes no sense at all -  i've written off Atari for other reasons than DRM but for copy protection reasons.  I think companies need to understand that by making honest people's lives more difficult they lose customers.  I buy almost every game I own from Impulse, Steam or Gamers Gate,  I occasionally buy actual disks through cd wow as they are Asian English disks (but genuine not boot leg)and very cheap (like$50 instead of $100 - remember that $100 Australian buys US$92 at the moment) and seem to have almost no drm's on them.  It's also perfectly legal to do so.

I prefer to buy from impulse as i really respect their gamers bill of rights - but i often find games on steam for the same price BUT steam will sell them to me in Australia and impulse it only USA and Canada...

I agree, however the problem is companies like Activison - who are currently facing the loss of their biggest and most successful franchise - don't learn because the majority of customers don't care.  They don't read the forums, they don't follow the news - they don't understand Activison's business practices, they don't know about Ubisoft's DRM until they've purchased the game and they don't realise how bad EA Games' customer service is until they need it.  They just want to play games, and franchises like Call of Duty, who get all the media coverage and massive promotional drives despite being a milked franchise produced by the worst publisher in the industry, will still sell because the majority of people simply don't care.  Shit, I'd wager that the majority of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's customers don't even know that two different companies make Call of Duty games.


Exactly my problem.  I want to support Impulse, however their contracts prevent them from selling to me while Steam's don't.  Steam is currently attempting to become a market monopoly with it's Steam Works DRM software - literally trying to force other companies like Stardock to force their customers to use Steam to play the games they've bought on Impulse - and so I really, really, really don't want to give them my money.  However, it's bloody hard to be a legit customer when I'm caught between over-priced retail products - we're talking US$107.00 for a AAA title! - unethical or over-priced digital distribution platforms where the only fair priced games are the ones they can't sell to me, and companies like EA Games attempting to kill the second hand market with their release day DLC thus making places like eBay an endangered species for fairly priced games.  Any wonder piracy looks like an attractive alternative to so many people?  I don't condone piracy under any circumstances, however even I have to admit the video games industry need to shape up.

Random quote from a book I read today. I liked what was said, and how it was said, so I thought that I could just interject it for fun.

And now for some interesting Articles.

This one is for Nesrie
Microsoft will now be shutting down MSN Music's servers - think a smaller, less good version of iTunes and you'll understand what the service was.  Now that it's closing down, users will need to activate their music for their PCs... and then hold on to those exact machines for the rest of their lives.  Upgrading a computer and changing operating systems is considering enough to void an activation, and with the service shut down the user won't be able to migrate an activation and thus they'll lose access to the music they paid for without an avenue to re-acquire them.

And now, for my favourite news in quite some time - Avatar's Blu-ray release.
Firstly, the Avatar release schedule was staggered for no apparent reason other than to annoy customers who were waiting for the release.  Then the news the first release will contain zero extras, and a Director's Edition will be released at the end of the year - nearly 7 months later - and that it'll house all of the extras, which is obviously a greed-focused cash grab.  Now it seems Avatar's Blu-Ray DRM simply refuses to allow the disc to function on many Blu-Ray players, despite firmware upgrades.  Some people have reported that the disc will simply not load at all regardless of the player they use and regardless of firmware update versions, essentially giving them a non-working disc for the time being.
However, for all of the annoyances of DRM, it seems that the disc itself isn't loaded with any extras however it is loaded with nearly twenty minutes of unskippable warnings against piracy and many, many previews - enough to warrant many people to comment on just how long it takes to actually load the movie they've purchased, assuming it even works.
And now for the best part!  It then seems that due to the staggered release, the Blu-Ray version of Avatar is on it's way to becomming the most pirated release of all time.  Some customers even apparently downloaded a pirate version to replace the version of the film they paid for and could not get working.
So, not only is the DRM-straddled version the most pirated release of all time, it also doesn't work for paying customers easily and then puts those same paying customers through twenty minutes of unskippable crap before they can even watch the film?  And Pirates get a 100% working product without unskippable previews attached to the front of the film?  Why are we supposed to pay for the film again?

Why thanks Zehdon. Always good to see customers get screwed by various entities, especially once as rich as Microsoft which has no good reason to give the customers who actually paid for their music the finger when they could have easily just gone online and found the same track at a number of places instead.

As for Avatar, what a mess they've created.

Oh i forgot, this is the part where I am supposed to condemn piracy, tell them those deadbeats to go buy what they want and then bendover when their reward is to get screwed by the very companies they actually pay.

Until customers have actual rights, it's a dead issue. You can never convince millions of people they are better of getting ripped off than not.

I tend to agree.  I don't condone piracy, but it's getting harder and harder to advocate paying for releases when the bought versions of games and movies simply don't work.  I don't enjoy throwing money away, I don't believe most people will either.