kiwilove Posted January 11, 2015 Share Posted January 11, 2015 (edited) Most of us tend to think we know about the piracy issue... but do we really? A whole lot of piracy could have been stopped - if the copy file option was not available, etc. But that would have also stopped the legitimate use of such a useful function for backing up your own work, etc etc. And if piracy was not so rampant - I'd guess the popularity of computers would not have caught on as quickly - that it would have taken perhaps 5 to 10 years longer to get to where we are now? Or longer... Of course, there is always some way to copy - if one wants to. Like - most people probably don't realise that the easiest way to copy cassettes - was to use a device that had twin tapes and can do high speed duping if one so desired... Anyway - if the world didn't so openly copy (or pirate) in real life - then civilisation would not have advanced as quickly as it has... That a good idea always caught on - and will spread - this is the story of civilisation/progress/the future and so on... You can see it in our everyday life - that we have foreign stuff in our lives everyday, and more often than not - we do not know where it came from? Such as the 'zero' from India - 1 to 9 from Arabic? and so on... Christianity is imported from the Middle East - and the Jews themselves borrowed/copied/pirated from earlier and surrounding cultures to create their own religion/etc... Ever since patents tried to so-call protect ownership of ideas or rather designs of implementation - there can be the non-crediting of the original inventor/desigener/scientist/etc who created it in the first place. With copying or piracy - we'd still be in the dark ages - for sure. No one can actually own ideas or inventions - and everything is really for the use of anyone who wants to take advantage of it. Harvey Edited January 11, 2015 by kiwilove Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wally1 Posted January 11, 2015 Share Posted January 11, 2015 interesting Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwilove Posted January 12, 2015 Author Share Posted January 12, 2015 With copying or piracy - we'd still be in the dark ages - for sure. No one can actually own ideas or inventions - and everything is really for the use of anyone who wants to take advantage of it. Harvey An obvious typo above... Should be : Without copying or piracy - we'd still be in the dark ages - for sure... When this world is so tightly focused on the almighty dollar - that skews the whole world/universe the wrong way round. Copying is how children learn.. and is the easiest way of learning. Harvey 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Copy disk/file from Dos barely makes a difference. For starters most commercial games were on disks that didn't have a Dos file structure and wouldn't have copied across using Dos/Dup commands anyway. And without cracking, it wasn't possible to get practically all copy-protected software to duplicate properly with standard hardware. Cross-country road race from Activision an exception there... I found you could copy it by just partially formatting the destination disk, it was sufficient to make it think the required bad sectors were there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awesp Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 "Christianity is imported from the Middle East - and the Jews themselves borrowed/copied/pirated from earlier and surrounding cultures to create their own religion/etc..." May I humbly suggest that we stick to IT related topics and do not touch the sensitive area of religion...? 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wally1 Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 (edited) God is Jewish! Edited January 12, 2015 by Wally1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tillek Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Is this one of those topics that you read the next morning after you posted it and swear never post while drinking ever again? 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GlowingGhoul Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Atari seemed to have the most effective protection schemes. If I remember correctly, on the C64 and Apple II, you could copy any protection with software only. No need for an expensive Happy upgrade. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+David_P Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Certain Atari programs could be copied and cracked relatively easily; as I recall, Cosmic Balance (at least the original) relied on a single bad sector read, on a DOS II disk; editing the file that made the call to the bad sector to look at sector zero would return the same error and let you play the game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillyHW Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 A huge reason for the success of the Windows and PS1 platforms was piracy, and I believe the laxness which Microsoft and Sony showed toward piracy in the beginning was deliberate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamchevy Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 In the beginning? A quick stop at kickass.so or demonoid proves they are still big fakers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomSW Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Hehe. Just wait when "most interested ones" enter this thread. ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reds1f14 Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Purposely putting bad sectors/tracks on a disk was one thing that was done. A lot of those copy protected disks, you cannot bring up a directory on. Did they just make a custom DOS that put the directory somewhere else? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Piracy happened because it had to, the human mind has in most cases a learning feed that wants to know how stuff works and if its told it can't do something many then decide to see why it can't and seek to challenge that idea. Piracy or plagiarism isn't new as the poster says, its been going on since day one and actually has benefited mankind in its creation of minds and sharing of knowledge. Obviously there's the unwanted negative effects, crime, theft, businesses folding and personal loss but on a slight skew let us not think it all is done by spotty faced nerds sitting in rooms 24 / 7 (although many crackers I met back in the day would fit that example perfectly), much of the piracy has been done by people in suits, well paid people in good positions and even the industry themselves. I knew people in the BBC (they were one of our big customers in Maplin) who would offer you copies of shows but more specifically I knew a couple of well up folks who were at the heart of the supply and spread of Atari stuff, just the same as some of the early games like the unreleased Ms Pacman actually fell out of Atari Slough (fact) and lead to the first ever case of software piracy in court in the UK, they guy in question was a friend who I ended up working with. Anyway, there's proof out there that piracy isn't just a negative effect, it has helped drive tech forward and while there are still people who dare accept the cracking challenge it will carry on, the sad side is that its also decimating small software houses and in many parts of Asia a multi million / billion pound crime spree where proceeds end up in numerous other money making enterprises like drugs etc. Computer / software piracy will always be a tough debate, people with viable arguments either way but neither really make much difference as until its made impossible to copy then piracy in its many forms will exist. It remains a subject that makes tempers fray and I hope people will not allow themselves to get to that point. In the terms of the Atari 8bit all I can hope is that we protect our devs, as long as the material is good there always will be a market for it but it won't make anyone rich.. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 I'm waiting for Video61, Kjmann and Peteym to kick in, so they can share their point of view about piracy with us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evilmoo Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Piracy involves attacking and hijacking ships at sea. Copyright infringement involves unauthorized duplication of copyrighted works. If we're going to discuss this, we shouldn't taint the discussion with loaded words and phrases. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Piracy has been considered a normal term for copyright theft for tens of years... Also Piracy and copyright theft are too little display the full effect so if anything we should be broadening the terms rather than trying to restrict them. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 In early days it helped to connect different cultures... It built bases for new civilisations "hey, we have sharp swords, they have horses..(/§$%&/#=?#'*#'*/).. now we have both " Almost all storys in the "old testament" were taken from chinese history and changed to fit to the "near eastern" territory. Today it helps spreading new technologies. I'd bet even the useless 4K TVs find their buyers, because they can get "free" 4K materials from the Internet. The A8 died due to the missing "new copies". C64 had the biggest copypark in the 80s. People bought a C64 because the "neighbour" had tons of copies. The copies built a market of interests, which resulted in people buying the software, they liked. Making a potential "win" calculation possible, after the machine had been spreaded. Piracy is the base of all civilisations, it just changes the face from time to time... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kogden Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 I'm waiting for Video61, Kjmann and Peteym to kick in, so they can share their point of view about piracy with us. Yeah because if it weren't for piracy, they'd be rolling in dough like Bill Gates right now and there'd be a PlayStation 4 version of Tempest Xtreem. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evilmoo Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Also Piracy and copyright theft are too little display the full effect so if anything we should be broadening the terms rather than trying to restrict them. No matter what the full effect is, copyright infringement is still not equivalent to people being attacked and killed while out on the open waters, and to continue referring to it otherwise is intellectually dishonest. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 The word "Piracy" doesn't refer to actual pirates on the high seas when employed in its common usage to describe software theft. To assert otherwise is intellectually dishonest. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Here in the Netherlands (I'm curious whether this 'title' is also used in other countries) people who undertake illegal activities on the ether radio/TV-bands, are also called "Piraten" (Pirates) … I recall fabulous pirate radio-stations somewhere in the 80's with exotic names like "Radio de specht" (Radio the woodpecker) and "Radio de IJsvogel" (Radio the Kingfisher) and the very cosy "Vlistam Radio" (no translation). That were definitely the GOOD TIMES. So for me "Pirate" does not have a negative sound. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Yeah: we had offshore Pirate Radio stations here too; they typically played all the best records. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 The word "Piracy" doesn't refer to actual pirates on the high seas when employed in its common usage to describe software theft. To assert otherwise is intellectually dishonest. Thank you Jon for asserting that, Perhaps I should go all opposite and check Captain Jack Sparrow for a happy or archiver hidden in his cabin.. Piracy like many words has expanded in meaning since the old sea shanty days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 There's also the argument that it isn't exactly theft because it does not cause a loss of the item. If I steal an apple, you don't have that apple anymore. If I copy a game, the author still has the game and all rights to it. What I've done is affect the scarcity of the game which devalues it (and of course, I'm breaking the law). However, one thing is sure: Not every copied a game is a lost sale. I would have had just a few games and probably lost interest in the system if I'd had to buy each one. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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