I could agree with that. Of course, wouldn't you want your children to benefit from your hard work?  Also I don't like people being able to purchase copyrights from someone else.. At that point the person who has the rights is someone rich who used their wealth to make more without effort.. But even still with that they made an investment that has a risk and that needs to be considered. 

I'm getting dizzy!!!!

By the way ships have fog horns... trains go woo woo!!!!!!

Your father made a product, it was his, he shouldn't be able to transfer the rights to it. It should be attached to him as the fruit of his labor. Michael Jackson shouldn't have been making money off of the Beatles' work. I'm all for remakes of songs, so long as they have the author's permission, the author is dead, or that it is a parody. Parody is currently a valid against copyright, of which I wholly support.

This proves you don't even have a basic understanding of how soceities work. You actually think there are enough police or officers of the law on the planet to keep people safe? Do you really think that? Have you had a look outside of your house lately and counted the number of officers to the number of average citizens lately? You aren't safe in your house because somewhere out there is an officer with a gun and a badge to take down the bad guys, you are safe in your house because society, as a whole, has accepted that rape and murder and theft, in general, are bad things and they don't do them. Hell while random acts of rape and murder happen, more often than not it's people you know so locking your doors doesn't do a damn thing if you let people in that you know (at this point I will just assume you have friends and family and they enter your house on occasion).  You think that the threat of being caught deters people... yeah some but this might be a big surprise to you, most criminals don't ever think they are going to be caught so guess what, the punishment isn't even in the equation when they commit a crime.

No my friend, it's not the laws or the police that dictate society, it's societies acceptance of those laws and the power of those officers  that keep you safe. And if you loose that acceptance, well history shows us what happens when those in power of laws (which may or may not be ethical as someone already pointed out) and upholding those laws looses the support of the masses.

Wow, you are really a piece of work though. You jump on my case about the use of the word magical and here you are bringing rape and murder into the mix.

We are getting way way off topic here.

As for Synnworlds questions about using emulators for games no longer being made or sold.

I think it is fine to use emulators for old NES and SNES games. The producers of such products are not losing sales because you can't buy them anyways or a system to use them on. They are not losing out at all.

What they are gaining in the long run especially if the game was a good one (Zelda) they are getting exposure for future releases of their games. I use DOSBOX to play MOM and Darksun Shattered Lands all the time. Would I go out and buy a copy of MOM and DS today. No. I have bought at least two copies of both in the past and without emulators they wouldn't run anyways and the chance of finding the games to buy would be close to nil.

Emulators like DOSBOX keep real good games alive. Without emulators alot of these programs would vanish into obscurity.

Now I know some companies rerelease old games that are able to work on Windows Vista / 7 and if that is the case you should buy the new release because it will work on your system.

I use emulators to play snes games and nes games and a few n64 games. Mostly I let my kids play them on my pc.

It probably is steeling but I doubt those company loose a lot from me. But if I am a crook well so be it.

One thing is that I would never buy those old games and game console and I make no profit from them. I do have a wii and I still refuse to clone it. My friend did his I swear it is tempting but I still buy my games   For now anyway. Nintendo wii games are usually cheap in prices so I do not mind buying them.

I think the line where "Emulators" is involved is somewhat blurry from a legal standpoint as many of them are in fact legal. Look at "M.A.M.E." which stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulation. Many old arcade games are considered free-ware after something like 10 or 15 years. Also, arcade games are not "kept" like console and PC games are. In fact without Roms of those old arcade games some of them would have been lost to history now as even the companies that made them no longer exist. In the realm of "Legal" roms and game back-ups those that exist are mostly old arcade games.

Once you start emulating console games is where the legal line is drawn as many companies still make money off them. Though as I understand it I think some Atari and original N.E.S. roms are legal now because of their age and expired copyrights. Mostly though, console emulation is still considered a form of piracy.

Another perfectly legal emulator is "Mugen". Mugen is a free code source machine that runs arcade style fighting games, but if you know the language you can make your own game. Many of these have been made totally for free by the Mugen community and are considered fan works and distributed for free. You do how-ever find a lot of characters that are copyrighted such as Spider-Man, Batman, Gundams, you name it. If it's been in a fighting style video game it's available on Mugen. Still as long as no one takes credit for inventing a character and gives the proper credits I think it's legal as well. It's like to say I drew a picture of Batman and host it on my MySpace page. Everyone knows I didn't invent Batman, but I still want to show off the cool picture I drew. Is DC going to sue me? Probably not and I don't think any infringement or copyright laws are being broken.

By looking at these examples we do see that the Legal Line in certain areas is quite blurred on the subject. When it comes to modern Piracy though the line is very clear. Sadly I can see only one ultimate outcome of this. As the Internet evolves it will become more and more "policed". Authorities will be granted the same abilities they have in the real world "online" only it will be taken to even more of a extreme. The time will eventually come where access to the Internet will be solely government controlled. Citizens will have access but everything they do will be monitored. The Government will decide what sites you can go to and ultimately what information is available to you. You won't even be able to access "Pirate Sites" as they will blocked by every ISP because none of the companies will break the Government mandates. Sound scary? It's already being done in China and other countries are starting to take the same approach. No one would ever download a illegal copy of the game if they knew all their Internet activity was being monitored and that by agreeing to be online you agree to have your computer virtually inspected any time the government wants to do it.

Eventually all the people with money who say they "lose money" by Piracy will get "Laws" like this passed in the United States. Voters and Politicians can be bought and paid for just like anything else. When that day comes, And It WILL, any "Freedom" we have on the Internet will be gone.

The really messed up thing is Everyone will agree to this because they'll say "If you're not doing anything wrong online you don't have anything to worry about!!! Only Internet Pedophiles and Thieving Pirates would be against This!!! Our children can finally be Safe online!!!".... and so to such cries democracy will die.

(Ok so I got a little dramatic with the last paragraph..lol)

One thing I've thought would be pretty cool is if instead of being sued, out-right pirates just had to have a tag associated with them when on the internet and when at conventions, so content creators could take a look at the crowd and choose who to make content for, and who to not bother with.

Interesting...How about a facial tatoo?  /Sarcasm

-Twilight Storm

That's EXACTLY what should NEVER, EVER, happen. Once you do that you label a huge portion of society as "undesirables". Once someone makes a mistake and gets labeled they are counted Out for the rest of their lives? How fair is that? Someone pirates a game one time in their lives and they are Blacklisted for the rest of their lives? Pirates have contributed hugely to some games and even keep some games alive when they would have died out or been otherwise unavailable. Some successful companies have even Counted on a game being Pirated to help sell more legitimate copies. In a certain "sense" Pirates have contributed to the gaming community as a whole in ways no one would ever think of. It's not like their terrorists.

Talk about a nastygram on the net. Sounds like you guys seriously think I would desire that. It's a tongue-in-cheek comment about what pirates should expect in terms of content creators continuing to make content for them.

RavenX, there's a reason I used the word "Outright" in describing pirates, because I'm not talking about people preserving out-of-production games, and especially not about the creator of this thread who seems to be interested in making fair use of the games for an academic purpose - that person is not a pirate at all.

However, if someone is the kind of person who would (for example) download Starcraft II the day of release and play it without ever paying, then I hope that person is not surprised when the Blizzard Developers don't care about any suggestions or comments they might have to make for the game they stole.

Pirates should simply be made to walk the plank.

I do see where you're coming from, but, the logic is still flawed. Because someone makes a mistake in the past doesn't mean they won't have anything positive to offer in the future. I my-self am a perfect example here, allow me to explain.

I've freely admitted, more then once, that the first Stardock game I ever played was a copy of Gal Civ 1 that was pirated off the web and given to me. Even though I didn't download it my-self, I knew it was a pirated game when it was given to me and I didn't turn it down. I played it and enjoyed it for a long long time.

Since then how-ever because of the quality of Gal Civ 1 I have bought and paid for (and would be glad to prove it) Gal Civ 2, All of it's expansions, Sins and All of it's expansions, Demigod, Stardock's Fences and Object Dock, Elemental War of Magic, and a few other miscellaneous programs. In all if I add up the money I've spent on Stardock products since I was first given a stolen copy of one of their games I've spent well over $400. Do you think it was worth it to Stardock that I got a free copy of one of their games? I'm now a happy, loyal, Stardock customer. I've helped out with numerous idea's here on the Elemental forums. I've taken part in internal discussions with certain SD staff members (which I won't name), and my input was taken into account to improve Elemental as a whole. In fact to name a example of my input, the changes to how resources can be captured, I was discussing that with Scott back when the beta had just launched.

So since I received a pirated Stardock game years ago does that make all my input since then null and void? Let's ask the owner.

Hey Brad, after reading all that, and knowing how much money I've spent supporting your company since then, do you consider me to be a dirty thieving pirate or am I a valued customer?

I'm not sure what his answer will be (if any) but either way his company isn't hurting from all the money it's gotten out of me since then. I'd say it was well worth whatever the actual price of Gal Civ 1 was. Wouldn't you?

You mean like the sex offender list... Noone has a problem with that.  Also you have to list your prior arrests when applying for a job. Maybe your pirate record could only be seen for when entering a convention or putting up suggestions on forums?

It would stop pirating better than drm I bet. And if you think pirating isn't so bad then why would you care if people knew....

Maybe there shouyld be a rank system them... more stripes if you pirate more... You could rank them from scallywag to captain!!   

Actually, I know a lot of people who have a problem with that, including more then a few of my friends I went to High School with back in the day. I don't have a problem when it shows the name and address of some sicko who kidnapped and raped a kid, I DO have a problem when it lists a guy who's a Sex Offender because he was caught taking a leak on a tree on the side of the road because he couldn't hold it and there wasn't a bathroom for miles. I also have a problem when people decide to take the law into their own hands and "punish" Sex Offenders because their addresses are listed online. It would be better as a whole for society if the real sickos were NEVER let out of Prison while the ones who passed proper mental examinations and have proved they aren't a danger to anyone were removed from being "Sex Offenders" in the first place. The only people I know who don't have a problem with the way the laws are set up down here in Florida are over-protective over-reacting parents who are too stupid to take care of their kids themselves. Lazy parents who don't know how to be parents are all for making the system as "Safe" as possible. That just gives them more free time that they don't have to be responsible for their own children and their actions. I knew how to stay away from sickos when I was a little kid and I didn't need a map of my neighborhood showing me where all the perverts where to stay safe. I was raised right and had parents who actually cared about my well being.

That part might actually be kinda cool...LoL

It would be too fun, everyone would want to pirate so that they could move up in the ranks

"Hurray, I've achieved Admiral!!!"

lolz.  I agree with Raven on his take on sex offenders.

-Twilight Storm

Agreed.....And it does suck for those who had to piss..  Sometimes my hands type faster than my brain thinks...Which is pretty bad since I'm a slow typer..

I beat my friend today in typeracer! He usually clocks about 100-110 GWAM, but he was having an off day so I beat him three times in a row

On a more on topic note,

What do you guys think of this lecture about piracy. I think he brings up some good points.

if the developer isn't willing to sell it to you, there is no harm in you copying it.

there is one issue... what about games that are outlawed in your country... for example, fallout3 has been outlawed in communist totalitarian countries such as australia (Among many other games banned there). If you are an aussie and you want it you need to pirate it; there is no loss sale because their congress believes games are evil and the game is banned for sale anyways.

Sounds okay to me, since they're losing nothing and there is ABSOLUTELY no other way for you to get it.  Well, unless you can smuggle a legally bought copy in somehow...

-Twilight Storm