sticky subject ........

[wOoDz]

renamed by woodz

just want to say sorry to CJ if the comment about "touting warez" was directed at me, i just want to say ALL the links i posted WHERE NOT to any warez sites, all the software was freeware available to everyone and i found useful,  TS2 was free to everyone 4 years ago from the makers. and the link is to a uni site if i remember right,i think warez are a bunch of w****kers who do nothing but harm to the internet, but from now on i'll post no more links, my site is nothing to do with warez either, the domain name will be changed as soon possible

sorry woodz

[Flippy_D]

Good man.

[Pumaman]

o_O

No, I wasn't saying anything directed at you. My comment in the other thread was directed at benbigbrain for asking for links in the first place, but more generally just to say what the forum policy is on such things.

Relax, I know you guys who replied were just trying to be helpful

[DGMacphee]

* DGMacphee adds a note to Gen Forum rules.

[wOoDz]

ok thanks i know i over reacted, but when you have daughters who unknowingly end up downloading, porno search engines, screen savers and all the rest of that crap from a site claiming to be a kids site, you tend to have a big problem with assholes like warez!

thx woodz
edited:

fixed it archangel

[Archangel (aka SoupDragon)]

*psst*it's download, not upload

[Shattered Sponge]

I would be very disturbed if they were uploading all that...

[TheYak]

Warez is generally some bad stuff.  I must say that I've pirated the odd program but those that were worth anything I went ahead and purchased.  I'm one of those doesn't always do the right thing but his heart's in the right place kinda people.  If I download a buncha music off Kazaa, I'll burn it to a CD.  If I ever listen to the CD more than once, I buy something from the band.  There's probably about 200 bucks worth of CD's I wouldn't have purchased if not for Kazaa & Morpheus.  Same with games.  I never would've purchased Worms 2, Worms Armageddon or Worm World Party with warez. (I could probably name a few dozen other games or apps too).  

I'm a free-communication and give access to people who won't abuse it kinda person.  Unfortunately warez distribution doesn't produce solid citizens.  It's become the porn industry of software.  Eliminate warez and porn and you've got a 90% spam-free pop-up free bad-link free internet.  The only thing you'd hafta deal with then would be the X10 camera ads.  

Maybe I'm just old-school but dealing with warez used to be an interesting hobby that took some brains.  I'm recalling my BBS'ing days.  Having to have connections to do stuff and tradeing, hoarding and actually promoting games for purhase used to be a bit more commonplace.  If it weren't for long-distance bills, I'd be all for a BBS-style structure to the internet.  Aw, crap, I'm rambling again.

[SSH]

Same with games.  I never would've purchased Worms 2, Worms Armageddon or Worm World Party with warez.

But most games these days have demos that you can legally download and try out.

[Pumaman]

YakSpit: I think you make a good point about warez being too easy these days. With the advent of all these P2P networks like Kazaa, there's just no skill in downloading the stuff any more.

And there are some applications which cost a huge amount such as Photoshop, that people simply wouldn't use if they didn't pirate it. I think it's when the software companies start losing out because you could afford to buy it, but instead decide to pirate it, that it becomes more of a sticky issue.

I'm not trying to argue that warez is a bad thing though. 15 years ago, my first experience of adventure games was a pirated copy of (I think) Space Quest 2. If I'd never had that, I may well never have got into adventure games and bought many of them later on.

[TheYak]

Heh, CJ speaking out for the warez.. way to go. =]   Actually, I had similar experiences.. my first adventure game I think  (aside from an ascii action/adv called Castle) was KQ4 which my dad copied from a friend and I played in glorious monochrome.  Later, I was amazed by my friend's SQ3 and copied it to play in 4-color.   I was hooked and then began to purchase my own.  

About game demos... these days they're also either released well before the game so don't have all the features, features get dropped, or they're so buggy there's no way I'd play the actual game if it were like that.  The better game demos come out well after the game has come out.   I really don't like the current system..  release Unreal 2, let people buy the stinker, months later release a demo hoping to corral all the people that actually like the gameplay into buying it.  Some game demos have so little gameplay it's hard to get a feel for the features (mostly due to their inclusion of FMV and other non-essentials that inflate demo size).  Anyone remember when Wolfenstein came out?  Or Doom for that matter?   You played an entire episode (or roughly 1/3 - 1/4) of the game before you decided to buy it.  That model seemed to work for Id since Doom is one of the most purchased games ever (I'll concede probably one of the most pirated too, but that's irrelevant in this case).  when companies start learning their lessons and actually give us a taste of a game before buying it, or stop hyping something they're pulling millions into only to forget putting any kind of depth, then I'll be a little happier with making "blind" purchases.  If I would've blind-purchased any game in the past couple years, it would've been Unreal 2.   Boy, am I glad I didn't.

[Trapezoid]

Yeah, the shareware-type system Id and other companies used to use was cool. Mmm, Commander Keen Part 4....

I'm not too much against Warez. Warez sites are usually really evil though. Apart from Abandonware, I don't think there are any actual warez sites that carry any games. Just pop ups.
Abandonware sites (wether the titles they have are actually "abandonware" or not) are usually much more benign though. It's for nostalgia, and it's unlikely that you'd buy any abandonware games if they weren't up for download.
Actually, a good chunk of the games I've pirated are games that I already owned but lost my CD to.

[wOoDz]

i do use kazaa, but its mainly music,  a lot of the time the qualities shite so if its something i really like i'll buy the cd, some stuff i wouldn't buy anyway.
PSP i got off kazaa but i don't/can't work so i could never of afforded to buy it. i know its wrong, i don't profit from it, and  pc stuff is the only hobby i can do rght now. all the rest cost a lot of feckin money!!
the only time i stumbled into awarez
site, i was looking for "black and white" creatures` why do people even bother? you can never get anything, just end up in some demented link loop, and dozens of popups

woodz

[remixor]

I really don't like warez, and (here's the issue that always makes me unpopular) I also don't like p2p music pirating.  As far as warez go, it just makes software far too easy to illegally obtain, and despite the fact that I'm against it, I still occassionally download software I don't own.  I do think companies like Adobe should be a bit more realistic with their retail prices; they obviously can't expect everybody to pay what they ask.  Other than that, though, I think the scale that software piracy has reached is unacceptable.
As far as music goes, I also think that organizations like the RIAA need some serious reform.  However, I'm not so naive as to think that most people download music as some form of social protest.  That's a load of crap.  People download music because it's easier than going to a record store and because they don't have to pay.  I do the same thing, although I try hard to only download music that I already own on CD if I haven't ripped it yet.  Despite my attempts, it's very difficult not to fall prey to the temptation to download music one doesn't own.  I'm not trying to put myself on a pedestal with some sort of holier-than-thou testimony here; I'm probably something of a hypocrite but I do wish that we didn't have all this p2p software so that piracy wouldn't be so widespread and accessible.  People make arguments like "well, the record industry is still growing"--that's true, but the rate at which it's growing is falling, and compared to how much it SHOULD be growing taking inflation and population increases into account, the it's doing rather poorly.  I'm not saying that record companies are in danger of going bankrupt or anything, but the more people who are born in a world where they quite simply do NOT have to pay for music, the less people are going to buy albums.  The more this happens, the harder it will be for bands to support themselves.  I realize that it is not direct record sales that help bands; in fact, they don't make much money from each record sold.  However, bands must continue to sell records in order to prove to the record companies that it is in the record company's interest to keep them signed.  If everybody just downloads their music for free, they have no indication people are listening to their music.
I know people say "Well, I buy the album if I like it."  People say this, and maybe they do, but to be honest it sure doesn't seem like it to me.  I have many friends who literally brag about how many mp3 files they have on their machines, as if they somehow deserve to be proud of that fact even though it took no real effort on their part.

Anyway, I don't have too much of a problem with sharing on a smaller, more personal scale.  This may sound hypocritical of me, but I don't believe the issue is black and white.  The situation CJ described is one I'm sure many of us have gone through.  The first game I ever played on a PC was copied from a friend on floppy disk, but it's not as if that friend went out of his way to make thousands of copies and distribute them for free.  He gave it to me, and I enjoyed it and it got me into computer gaming; I then went on to purchase many other games myself.
Same goes for music.  Back before we had the internet, I'd borrow albums from friends, and of course I hadn't paid for them at the time but if I enjoyed it I'd go out and buy it myself, and maybe get into that band or that genre and purchase other albums.  Even things like making mix tapes for friends are not things I have problems with, because they operate on such a small scale and usually have much more genuine intentions.  P2P has nothing to do with that; it's simply a way of obtaining anything you want for free.  There's no reason to utilize discretion anymore.  If you want to try a band or some software, you don't even have to bother finding out anything about it, you just obtain it for free.  On top of that, people complain about the time it takes to download, or when people cut off their downloads when they're 90% done, as if they somehow have some right to complain about those things, despite the fact that they haven't paid a cent or invested the slightest bit of effort.
I sometimes imagine what would happen if p2p simply disappeared all at once and people actually had to make choices about what media they felt was important.  It would be an interesting scenario.

[DGMacphee]

Here's an interesting question to bing up:

Do you think Doom (and Duke3d, Quake and all the Doom clones) killed shareware?

I ask because you hardly see any shareware worth downloading these days.

I remember the fond days of Apogee and Epic Megagames -- Now, they're more commercial companies rather than shareware.

What do you think?

[Bob The Hun]

If I'm going to get an expensive program like Photoshop, I'm not going to download it off the web for free. I'm going to buy it for $15 out of the back of a van like a normal person.

[TheYak]

Well put.  I've got a few legal copies of bundled software sold to me for 5 bucks at various computer shows.

As for record companies.. screw 'em.  They're the leeches of the music industry.  When so little money goes to the bands for each album sold, why is it CD's have gotten twice as expensive in the past 5 years?  You can't tell me it's piracy - sales are up.  The record companies are using the napster/piracy issue as an excuse to rake in more profits.  Each frickin' cd costs them 72 cents! (This is taking the initial cost of layout, printing setup, mass production, burning to media, everyone's paychecks, etc).  Why the hell should I pay 24 bucks for a CD that I might not even like?  I'm gonna continue going the Kazaa route and buying shit that's actually worth something.   I'm also currently downloading Unreal 2.  I've heard that it's horrid but has nice eye candy.  If I actually find it enjoyable for some reason, I'm gonna buy the thing.  One argument you forgot is the one about software costing so much because piracy's so rampant.  That one's easily refuted with an example.  XP's been out for what 2.5, 3 years now?  The reason for their evil copy-protection scheme was given to the public as a piracy prevention method that would stop them from having to charge so much for their OS.  Has the price of XP suddenly dropped now that it's more or less the universal standard?  Nope.  I know it's still pirated, but a significant amount less.  I'm ranting here, but extremists on either side of the fence get to me.  Neither extreme side seems to regard all facts and based their "facts" on opinion.  It seems the only difference between the "small-scale" BBS/Disc copying piracy and the PtP style is that it's opened up piracy for the idiots.  Yay.  If anything, it seems piracy for the masses has only been a curse laid on the ones who did it before PtP-internet.

[Femme Stab Mode >:D]

Software costs money. Decent software costs more money. Good software costs a lot. Take Flash for example. It costs $500 for the full version. Some music my father downloads you can't get on CD anywhere because it's the Russian music that was played during his youth, in 1980-1986, or the band was only popular in Russia (like "vacuum" for example. Everybody loved them in Russia, everywhere else people disliked them).  My little sis is a fan of Elvis (yeah, yeah, I know) and she buys the CDs for $30 each or $10 out of the back of a van.  Don't the bands already get a blast out of singing and composing? Don't they have fun? Isn't that enough of a payment? Pleasing other people is just a side effect. Of course some make all their money prancing half-naked across the stage without having any talent.

[TheYak]

Good software costs good money, yes.. but 3d studio max costing 3500?  You'd think they could trim it down a tad and offer a "lite" version for broke-ass bastards like me.  Adobe had a good idea..   trim down photoshop some, call it Adobe Elements and charge a reasonable price.  If power users want more features, then they'll come up with the extra cash.  Nice plan.

[Fuzzpilz]

Note that if you buy music from major labels, the artist usually doesn't get anything much at all. These labels are really not worth giving your money to. Downloading the music instead of buying it doesn't harm the artists in these cases - if it harmed anybody, it would be the record companies (looking at all statistics, even the ones brought forward and intentionally misinterpreted by the RIAA, you'll see that it apparently doesn't - although they'd certainly deserve it), and your best choice would be getting the music off a P2P network and giving donations directly to the artist or something.
I'll shut up now before I go on a more detailed rant...