Piracy: Software and Video Games

Piracy: -noun, plural -cies.

1. The practice of a pirate; robbery or illegal violence at sea.
2. The unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc.: The record industry is beset with piracy.
3. Also called stream capture. Geology. diversion of the upper part of one stream by the headward growth of another.

It’s funny how one word can have so many different meanings isn’t it? In this article though, we will be focusing on the second definition, that of copyright piracy, but still the word itself has many different connotations. This is the first of a series of articles looking at piracy in its many forms, how it is done, how we can stop it, and why it occurs in the first place.

When someone says Pirate, what springs to mind? A Black Beard-esque figure with a hook hand and a speech impediment? A guy sitting in a nondescript room torrenting the latest films? How about a sneaky hawking merchant selling bootleg DVD’s in a marketplace? Or even to some people, a hero trying to bring down a corrupt and outdated industry. Read on and see if your opinion changes at all.

The Software Pirate

I think my first experience of software piracy was back when I was still very young, maybe twelve or thirteen. A friend of mine had one of those “chipped” playstations, and these weird gold discs as opposed to the black ones. That alone was pretty cool, but when he told me he could get any game he wanted for a fiver a disc I was amazed. Hence was my introduction into the world of software piracy.

At first it seemed too wild to be true. I looked in various PS magazines and found that chipping, as it was called was dangerous, voided your warranty, broke your machine and was very, very illegal. As far as the first part goes, all I can say is that eventually I was given that playstation- and it still works. The second part of course was very true. It didn’t stop my friend though, today he’s moved up from grey stations to the Xbox 360.

The point in case here is that the law does not discourage software pirates. And with the advance of PC technology and the internet, Piracy is now even easier than ever. All you need to do is download the image file of your chosen game, burn it and voila, you have your game. Chipping consoles is easier too; firmware updates mean that any moron can now play copied games on their consoles without even thinking about a soldering iron.