Downloading

There's been a lot of attention to it some time ago: Illegal downloading.
Lots of protests against SOPA and PIPA (what was ACTA again?), lots of lobbying to get it through anyway... Why?

Yes, I do download.
And some of those downloads aren't the most legal content.
But I must say: sometimes I want to play a game that's long gone from the stores (Homeworld, Descent: Freespace, ...) and knowing the original creators already got involved in bigger stuff, stopped caring about their first spawns or maybe just don't exist anymore I'd think they wouldn't mind that I enjoy their stuff and praise it without actually buying the game.

It's not that I refuse to buy the game... I'd buy it if I had the money. After all it's easier to do so than waiting for a few-Gig-file to download, installing the software, running activation blockers, or finding the folder the game got installed in to replace some files with cracked (and possibly virused) files. I'd rather insert the disk, let it run and play right away, while being assured of a decent support center when something goes askew...
Not to mention the (mostly) broken multiplayer you get with an illegal copy, which sometimes is basically the other half of the fun.

On the other hand, some software just is a tad bit expensive. Buying Adobe Creative Suit 4 as a requirement for your studies, using it for a year and then having to buy CS5 the year after was really an attack on my bank account...

But I still don't get why Big Companies are playing witchhunt on those who extend their software's user base and increasing potential buyers. After all, if it wasn't for illegal downloads I would've never thought of getting a Steam account where Valve could dangle some 5$ games in front of me, making it very attractive to buy more...

And what the hell happened to demo-versions? The only things you sometimes see when a game gets promoted are pre-rendered trailers and you basically have to rely on your computer to be strong enough to handle the software you've just bought...
For example: I (being a total hardware noob) am considering buying Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (purely hypothetically speaking). There is absolutely no way to test if my computer can handle the game or not, I have to rely on my own knowledge (very little) and the info given under "Minimal System Requirements" (note: unexistant on the main website) to understand whether my 5 year old laptop would survive it when I install such a thing. What do all those numbers and letters mean? I tend to figure it out, but I can imagine a lot of people who wouldn't know where to start...
A demo would be nice in those situations to see if your system is willing to handle all that violence and to see if the game is what you expect/want/like it to be. That's mostly what I use cracked games for: to see if my computer would run it may I want a good multiplayer.

(a small remark on MW3: Don't think I'll ever buy the game. The best military shooter has been made already (CounterStrike), now I would like a shooter with more challenge/imagination/creativity (Half Life 3 would be nice))

Anyways, I'm glad there are other approaches. For example (you may have wondered why I waited so long to bring this one up) Notch, creator of Minecraft has tweeted that he's pretty fine with someone pirating the game. "It's a minor offense in the scale of things". Sure, it's quite illegal, but in comparison to the number of people that actually bought it there isn't much reason to worry. Especially knowing Notch is currently a millionaire by making a (relatively) cheap but more than awesome game from scratch and with a completely new/original idea (something we don't see that much lately).

Especially knowing this I don't quite get why the Big Companies keep hammering on "their intellectual property" and how no-one else should have the right to do anything alike except for themselves. Want some more info on what copyright has currently come to? CGPGrey did a very nice instructional video explaining what the current laws are capable of doing.



(Ahh, the joy of successfully embedding videos in you own page)

This post is goining on longer than I originally intended.
Let me wrap this up...

I do download different stuff.
I don't like Big Companies with a lot more digits of income limiting us in distributing/recreating stuff they made.

Heh, that's about it.

Thank you for reading all this.

-ThOR