History Main / DigitalPiracyIsEvil

* OxhornShortShorts itself doesn't do this, but on the official Oxhorn blog, creator Brandon M. Dennis states that he has a very low opionion of internet piracy (whether of his stuff or of someone else's stuff) and politely explains why.

* Generally speaking: smaller European countries are hotbeds for piracy, party due to the amount of red-tape vs. the amount of money they generate for companies. This makes the legal offerings very scarce despite having (in some cases) 95% of the people on very fast broadband. This doesn't stop them from shouting at the top of their lungs that the legal way is just as good.

* [[http://torrentfreak.com/someone-is-leaking-our-torrents-burn-him-090208/ Sometimes]], even certain ''torrent trackers'' get upset when someone "pirates" their allready "pirated" stuff. Ah, the smell of [[IsntItIronic sheer irony]].

* [[YourMilageMayVary Arguably]] justified in ''MacHall''. [[http://machall.com/view.php?date=2002-08-15 A]] [[http://www.machall.com/view.php?date=2002-08-21 three]] [[http://www.machall.com/view.php?date=2002-08-30 strip]] arc, which points out that while anti-piracy measures may be inconvenient, all the blather pirates throw around doesn't change the fact that they'll pirate from ''anyone'', bad DRM or not. The strip was done in 2002, and still remains relevant.

* [[http://torrentfreak.com/someone-is-leaking-our-torrents-burn-him-090208/ Sometimes]], even certain ''torrent trackers'' get upset when someone "pirates" their allready "pirated" stuff. [[YourMileageMayVary It's either]] [[IsntItIronic sheer irony]], or maybe a completely different trope.

** Kid Rock also appeared on an episode of ''{{CSI}}'' as himself, accused of murdering an underling that leaked his latest album to the Internet. [[spoiler: He was innocent, and the murdered underling was acting under his orders.]]

** It should also be noted that, while only the first nine tracks to the album (''Ghosts I'') were made available on the band's website at the time of the album's release, [[http://www.archive.org/details/nineinchnails_ghosts_I_IV you can '''legally''' download the whole album for free.]] ''Ghosts I-IV'' is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license, in effect allowing anyone to legally share the entire album without any repercussions, as well as allowing people to remix the album's content (so long as it's for a non-commercial use, credit is given to the original artist, and the remixes are placed under the same license as the original album).

* Upcoming game ''Hyper Dimension Game Neptune'' has Nintendo DS flashcarts (And Custom Firmware) as the BigBad.

* The Ur-example is the Napster/Metallica debacle. In 2000, a demo of Metallica's song "I Disappear" showed up on the year-old Napster filesharing network; when Metallica found out that the song - and, indeed, most of its back catalog - was on the network, they became the public face of the RIAA's campaign to get the network shut down. Unfortunately for Metallica, this would end up [[XPacHeat biting them in the ass, as it would destroy their reputation in the eyes of their fans for years]], and it would turn a lot of people against the RIAA and their associated record labels.

** Additionally, the labels wouldn't start trying to find a way to sell digital music until after Napster went away, and it took an outside party (Apple) to create a viable digitial music marketplace (the [=iTunes=] Store), since practically every label-created marketplace ended up failing miserably due to a poor selection of music, high prices, incredibly restrictive DRM (you could only listen to a song a select few times per month!), and user interfaces which, let's put it kindly, drove users to just pirate music to completely avoid their Rube Goldberg-esque buying experiences.

** Metallica leading the charge against Napster was made worse by the fact that for years they had told their fans that it was perfectly fine to bring recording devices to their concerts to make bootlegs. During the 80s they even had a special section on the floor of their concerts for people who wanted to record the concert. Considering most bootleggers turned around and sold the tapes to Metallica fans, and Napster shared the songs for free, it struck old time fans as a bit hypocritical.

** Al himself doesn't really care if you download ANY of his songs these days... songs by ''other'' artists wrongly labeled as being by him, now that's a different story. Those infuriate him, especially if the song is way more vulgar than something he would normally write.

* [[JonathanCoulton Jonathan Coulton]]'s website actually says he doesn't mind if you "steal" his songs, and offers the chance to donate money "anyway".

** Additionally, with many people complaining about production issues with the album's release, many have resorted to pirating recordings of the album's songs taken from ''GuitarHero'' to have what they feel is a better-sounding version of the album.
* Counter-example: Kid Rock was once approached by his label to speak out against filesharers. He responded by refusing their request; in an interview, he stated that [[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7459796.stm "I was telling kids - download it illegally, I don't care. I want you to hear my music so I can play live."]]

** Green Day did something similar to this [[http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/5654.cfm in 2004]].

* Addressed by [[ThatGuyWithTheGlasses Linkara]] on his brother's internet show [[http://dumpstertech.livejournal.com/ DumpsterTech]], in heavy detail. His take on the situation: CopyProtection is evil and actually increases piracy, and there are generally three types of pirate - those who are douches who refuse to pay for anything ever, those who want to avoid said CopyProtection but would still legally pay for the game if it wasn't there, and those who ''can't'' get the content otherwise (usually because of lack of distribution in their area) - and gaming and other companies should really only watch out for the first type while using the internet and file distribution to their advantage to cater to the other two types for more revenue.

* Upcoming game ''Hyper Dimension Game Neptune'' has Nintendo DS flashcarts as the BigBad.

* ''{{Hyperion}}'' by Dan Simmons has the poet Martin Silenus thrust into massive debt when his second book bombs horribly. It's actually quite popular among Artificially Intelligent computers, but only one of them actually bought a copy; that AI then transmitted the contents to every other AI in existence. "Interstellar copyright doesn't mean shit when you're dealing with silicon."

* Arguably justified in ''MacHall''. [[http://machall.com/view.php?date=2002-08-15 A]] [[http://www.machall.com/view.php?date=2002-08-21 three]] [[http://www.machall.com/view.php?date=2002-08-30 strip]] arc, which points out that while anti-piracy measures may be inconvenient, all the blather pirates throw around doesn't change the fact that they'll pirate from ''anyone'', bad DRM or not. The strip was done in 2002, and still remains relevant.
** Of course, it goes completely against their case that things with intensive DRM (Spore etc) have extreme pirating compared to less intensive software. YourMileageMayVary as to whether or not this remains relevant or is just as ridiculous as anything else considered "anti-Pirate".

**[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMopSOkd9xg Found it]]

* RegionCodes. [[{{Gabel}} This Swedish troper]] would love to pay for all the Criterion Blu-Ray editions, but they are locked thanks to RegionCodes. Want to see TheThirdMan on Blu-Ray in Europe? Will not happen!

* ''RobotChicken'' had an ending gag around this, where some text debunked an argument about the damage caused by downloading movies on the economy as a whole, then stated that TV Piracy on the other hand was destroying this great nation.** AdultSwim itself has what is probably the best anti-piracy measure: A video section of their site that has full episodes to see on streaming video with ads. They show pretty much every WesternAnimation and LiveActionTV show they have, and a regular supply of anime they put up. It only has two flaws: The only archive they have is one full of clips, not full episodes, and they seem to not air certain anime at all, including big-hitter ''{{Bleach}}'', which is actually odd considering Viz has the license to ''DeathNote'', and that show was put online. And let's not get started on poor ''[[FridayNightDeathSlot Moribito...]]''

* ''RobotChicken'' had an ending gag around this, where some text debunked an argument about the damage caused by downloading movies on the economy as a whole, then stated that TV Piracy on the other hand was destroying this great nation.

** AdultSwim itself has what is probably the best anti-piracy measure: A video section of their site that has full episodes to see on streaming video with ads. They show pretty much every WesternAnimation and LiveActionTV show they have, and a regular supply of anime they put up. It only has two flaws: The only archive they have is one full of clips, not full episodes, and they seem to not air certain anime at all, including big-hitter ''{{Bleach}}'', which is actually odd considering Viz has the license to ''DeathNote'', and that show was put online. And let's not get started on poor ''[[FridayNightDeathSlot Moribito...]]''

* In the PC version of [[Ghostbusters: The Video Game]], the developers chose an interesting method of copy-protection, by making the Candleabra Crawler monsters, destroyable ghosts in the very first level, invincible. Since the Crawlers come at the player in swarms and will follow you relentlessly, it was next to impossible to proceed past the section where they are first encountered.

* [[http://xkcd.com/488/ This strip]] of ''{{xkcd}}'' explains how even if you do buy online music legally, you could still end up as much of a criminal as someone who pirated their music, thanks to the [=DMCA=].

** Oddly enough, the comic has a B-plot about the main character's grandmother trying to fight the city's using eminent domain to evict her from her house, albeit with (in her view, inadequate) compensation- the city technically wins but can't pay the revised total. It's apparently supposed to be analogous to the downloading story, possibly in applying moral equivalence between what the sympathetically portrayed homeowners are doing and the record companies, but it ends up not making much sense in context because of the dissimilar situations.

* "[[http://caricatura.ru/parad/grinchenko/3695/ That's patented!]]"; "[[http://caricatura.ru/parad/grinchenko/3718/ With copyright in head]]"; "[[http://caricatura.ru/parad/grinchenko/3786/ The Patent]]"; "[[http://caricatura.ru/parad/korsun/3921/ Attack]]" (text:"How do you think -- are our disks licensed?"); "[[http://caricatura.ru/parad/dubinin/3823/ Creative labour]]" (IfYouKnowWhatIMean... text:"Let's use protection ?.."); "[[http://caricatura.ru/black/korsun/457/ Civilized approach]]" (text:"...we chose deliberate and civilized approach to the protection of copyrights"; has author's comment: it was for journal article about "anti-pirate campaign" which turned out to be part of war between traders in infringing copies).

* [[{{Warhammer 40000}} Imperial]] {{Commissar}} Fuclaw from [[ImageBoards /tg/]] would like to [[http://1d4chan.org/images/8/8c/Fucklaw.jpg remind you]] that downloading illegal [=MP3s=] is '''HERESY'''.

* As [[http://www.somethingawful.com/d/comedy-goldmine/dvd-piracy-posters.php?page=10 the second and third photoshopped images of this page]] of [[SomethingAwful the goons]] parodying anti-piracy posters notes, one of the most fundamental problems of such mindset is that not only it may show average people that such thing as ''piracy'' exists, but also ''[[TemptingFate accidentally encourage it as well]]''.

* Another TakeThat: Doc (Finland) released a single "[[http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/41566 Pirate Bay]]" containing samples cut from audio material from the Pirate Bay trial, with a comment: "for years Pirate Bay has served netlabel Musictrade as a great global distribution platform" (he's on Musictrade). Now with [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hx9HKZBXiQ video]]. Also releasing it on "wild" torrents (i.e. other than clean and all-around certified Jamendo's), of course.

* Parodied in WeirdAlYankovic's "Don't Download This Song". Which he made available for downloading for free off [[http://www.myspace.com/weirdal his Myspace page]] several weeks before the album came out, thus ensuring the only way to hear it initially was to [[HypocriticalHumor download the song]]. The video which accompanies it is absolutely not to be missed... but [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qscadsLdvV0&feature=related how does one go about finding and watching a several-years-old music video]]?

-->"A lot of individuals have been saying they would have paid for Howl. But you know what? We would rather have you spend that money on CDRs and burn copies for friends and family. Music is about sharing."

* Averted by the [[http://www.baen.com/library/ Baen Books Free Library]], which is a site set up jointly by SF/fantasy writer Eric Flint and Baen Books Publishing to provide online copies of certain books free of charge. Both Flint and Mercedes Lackey, one of the other authors contributing books to the online Library, have actually noted a surge in sales of the titles available to read for free. In addition to the free library, the books you do buy have not a trace of the [=DRM=] on them that sites like Fictionwise have to labor under. Not to mention that they are in every format known to modern computers.