The Advantages of Piracy :
1. Piracy is easy : It is as easy as downloading pirated softwares (with cracks included) from your favorite torrent or file sharing site.
Compare it to the hassle of purchasing a software either from a store or online. You need to have a credit card handy or have a paypal account, go through several web-pages & payment gateways to purchase stuff.
2. Piracy is economical : Except for the price of Internet connection (if you're downloading stuff) or CD\DVD media (if you're getting it from someone else), it costs nothing to get pirated software. How economical !
3. Piracy is accessible : Softwares, games & movies might not be available for purchase near you. Pirated stuff is available everywhere for free.
4. No legal threats for piracy : I've never heard that anyone had been sentenced to prison for using a pirated copy of Windows XP.
5. Huge capacity Blank Optical media\Pen Drives\External HDDs : Are they meant to carry your .doc & .xls files ? No, for that an ordinary floppy disk would suffice. These devices are manufactured, sold & used for the sole purpose of piracy. Am I wrong ?
6. Oppressive anti-customer nature of companies : There are many instances where the legit customer faces difficulties with a piece of software while the pirates enjoy without any problems.
This is especially true for PC games where a genuine customer has to deal with nasty DRM's while the pirates use a crack.
Ubisoft's new DRM which they applied on games like Assassin's Creed II will surely make genuine customers turn to piracy.
Slumdog Millionaire, a movie based on India, was released in India much later than in the US. The consequence being - People downloading the US version & watching it much before release in India.
7. Companies supporting piracy : Microsoft too supports piracy. How ? They haven't applied any strict measures to disable pirated copies of Windows 7. What at most Microsoft does is putting up a message in the right hand corner "This copy of Windows is not genuine". All other Windows functions work properly. So why should people buy a genuine copy of Windows 7 ?
Ubisoft shamelessly distributed a no-DVD crack (made by a cracking group) as an update to the game Rainbow Six Vegas 2, claiming it to be made by them.
File sharing websites such as Rapidshare, Megaupload, etc. make money by encouraging users to pirate stuff. Some even offer incentives to share their "files" .
8. Open Source & Freeware : Most open source softwares & freeware are not as feature rich or as user-friendly as the paid
ones. Linux will not be able to replace Windows until everything in Linux can be done without using command-line. Similarly, there are no powerful freeware alternatives to professional softwares like Photoshop, Flash & Visual Studio.'
9. Try before you buy : Most movies (especially the Bollywood ones) aren't good enough to spend money for them. Same goes to music too. Piracy makes it possible to try stuff to check whether it should be purchased. If a movie is good enough, a person would still go to a theater even after watching a cam rip on the PC. Remember "3 Idiots" ?
10. Cheap high speed Broadband Internet/ 3G /WIMAX/ Unlimited plans (including night unlimited) : Are they meant for you to check your mail or chat with your friends ?
The Disadvantages of Piracy :
1. No support : You won't get any help from the companies, if you're messed up with any software.
2. Using pirated softwares does not make you a proud owner of the software.
3. By using pirated softwares, you might be funding the terrorists.
4. Pirated softwares might contain malware which could seriously damage your PC.
Compare the advantages with the disadvantages. Obviously the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Hence piracy flourishes.
I would love to see other members adding more points to both advantages & disadvantages section.
Also discuss if any point above is not true & why ?
IMO. Every movie is not worth watching in a Multiplex .
