Piracy

[Dr Unne]

I think we should disallow piracy threads in the Help forum. I don't know why, except that people stealing games ticks me off lately, and that it's terribly illegal. Not to mention the shady characters that get attracted by forums where people know they can get information about stealing / cracking software. No more piracy threads = no more emulation threads maybe, but oh well. Discuss.

[Shlup]

Arr, matey! What have you agains us pirate types?

Though I suppose the threads have the potential to sour our blossoming relationship with a certain you-know-what, staff. *cough*

I'm conflicted.

[Dr Unne]

Huh?

[Shlup]

Just trying to hint at a point the staff should consider before saying "nazi nazi nazi" without spilling any beans, since I'm pretty sure its supposed to be a secret.

[eestlinc]

i feel we should disallow such threads as well. encouraging illegal activity is not always the best idea. if we don't want pro drug threads then we don't want pro piracy threads either. if you want to discuss the merits, that's cool though.

[Garland]

I don't have any need for hacking/emulation/piracy threads, so it's fine with me if you ban them. They are illegal after all. Picking some illegal activities that it's ok to promote and some that it's not isn't consistant. Besides, "family/child friendliness" is often used as the weapon against the other controversial topics that aren't allowed. It won't be hard to argue that we don't want our children learning how to rob the gaming industry from EoFF.

[MecaKane]

People who don't know how freaking easy it is to get pirate stuff, don't deserve it.
Or something.

[Yamaneko]

I'm going to have to agree with Unne and the others. Would this include threads aiding in the dl and production of mp3 to audio CDs?

[crono_logical]

If it's a blatant piracy/warez thread like OMG GIMME WINXP CRACK, or GIMME KEYGEN, then no

Otherwise, I don't see emulator threads as a problem. In fact, saying "Go to the store, buy" is pretty ignorant since it's not possible to do for some games in some countries, or for older games which aren't in stores any longer. I'm sure many of us around here wouldn't have played FF6 or older if it wasn't for emulators. And should I ban everyone that's posted a thread about the NES FF3 and close all corresponding threads? I very much doubt anyone here (except perhaps Kishi) would have got the original game in japanese on a japanese console and played through that

Emulator threads and piracy threads are rather seperate things, the way I see it, and just because one can aid the other, doesn't make them the same.


Then there's also the fact that different people have different tolerances to whether certain things are piracy or not e.g. subtitled anime

[Dr Unne]

"It's not for sale here" is a lame excuse for allowing piracy threads. Yeah, there's an obvious difference between downloading a 15-year-old FF1 NES ROM and downloading Warcraft III 2 days after it was released and asking for cracks, I guess. Like I have the FF1 NES ROM on my site, but if people email me to ask for a ROM of the WSC version or of FFOrigins, I always tell them to go away / buy it. God knows I've pirated my share of stuff in the past, but not games. Stealing games just ticks me off.

[Advent Child]

I don't think "It ticks me off" is a good reason to disallow ROM threads. I also don't think "it's illegal" is a good reason because some people can't get them any other way. But I do agree that other piracy threads (keygen, cracks, etc.) shouldn't be allowed.

[Shoyku]

Originally posted by Advent Child
I also don't think "it's illegal" is a good reason because some people can't get them any other way.

However, it's a good enough one. It's still illegal, afterall. In addition, if people are talking about pirating games at all, we'll possibly get the wrong audience of members joining.

[RSL]

Illegal is illegal, whether you like it or not.

I might not be able to buy a Porche in my home town, that doesn't give me the right to steal one if someone else happens to have one.

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

I'm going to keep using my own discretion, thanks.

[Del Murder]

What exactly is 'terribly illegal'? That sounds more like it should be reserved for rape and murder, not copying games. But if there is a much worse degree of illegal designated to those crimes then my apologies.