I completely agree. Someone mentioned the people affected by Katrina above as being lazy. It’s a sad fact that people are so misinformed in a supposedly open society like we have. Those people didn’t ask for everything they had to be destroyed.

I really do think we have some serious problems in this country when it comes to recognizing the real important issues. Many of us are fortunate enough to not have to deal with poverty and hunger, so it’s not really an issue we have to take personally… although I wish more people would.

No it isn’t exaggerated. I pay taxes and my car was stolen from me. Did I get federal agents on the case? NO, I got little more then “Fill this out and we’ll let you know if we come up with anything” at the local Police station.

There’s more drug dealers then cops in most towns in America. Surely I’d rather see my tax money go towards ridding the country of them.

Did you know there’s actually people still starving in the US?
“33 million Americans continue to live in households that did not have an adequate supply of food. Nearly one-third of these households contain adults or children who went hungry at some point in 2000″

Did you know there are still victims of Katrina living in FEMA trailers with seemingly no salvation in sight?

“Did you know that approximately three quarters of our education system is underfunded, run down and in most cases classes are taught by substandard non qualified teachers?

I really could go on for hours pointing out many, many things of this nature but I think you have the picture.

So, myself and MANY other Americans are not “exaggerating” when we say that this is a huge waste of tax payer’s dollars because that is simply what it is. There are so many more important issues that should take precedent over this useless crap. It makes me sick to my stomach..”

You tell ‘em man.

Tell me please, if you can, how many of the people that u speck of are actually not able to work, because I know a lot of people that in case of a disaster like Katrina would loose everything, but all those people don’t work…because sometime in their life this thing happened that they got this social security grant and decided that they would ride their life out on this government check and they are perfectly able to work.

Now if you ask me what makes me more angry… spending government money on preventing crime like this one or giving checks to people that just decide to be lazy I think you already know what my answer will be.

Now I am really sorry that you’re car got stolen as I am sorry for the people that lost their homes in disasters but there is a system in this country that works really well in cases like this it is called insurance.

And if you don’t like you’re neighbor hood because of the crime… move to a cleaner place… that’s what I did.

Mod-chipping itself isn’t so much a problem as it is the piracy that’s the problem. There are a lot of people out there who don’t buy games at all, rather just get pirated copies. That isn’t fair to the company, and in my opinion, if you’re not willing to support a form of entertainment you apparantly enjoy, you shouldn’t be playing those games at all. I’m not saying go out and buy every game, but if you wanna try before you buy, rent it. There are a few online services, not to mention nearly every town in America has a video store.

Not to mention a majority of the time console developers make their money from games, not console sales (in fact, many lose money with each console…). Add in that there are dozens of people who work on these games for years, just to bring forth some entertainment to you. Then rather than actually try to support their hard work, you just steal it. Would you like it if someone came into your business and pretty much stole your hard work? It’s easy to say that “it’s entertainment, it should be free!” but that isn’t how the world works. It costs money to live, unfortunately. And it’s nice to get paid to entertain people, not to mention it’ll give you more time to be able to further entertain people because you can make a living doing it.

As for these oh-so-poor people who can’t afford the games… apparantly they can afford the systems and the modding. If you really want the game, save for it. Hell, if you really want the game, you should be more than willing to pay for it. Gaming isn’t exactly the cheapest hobby, and if you can’t afford it maybe you should look for some other form of entertainment. I knwo there are a lot of times where I haven’t been able to afford a game, but you know what I do? I save my money, because I feel the game designers deserve to be paid for their services.

I think it’s a sad state of affairs that today kids are growing up thinking it’s perfectly fine to download games, music, and movies and think there are no repercussions for doing so. It’s also sad that a lot of people think piracy doesn’t hurt any industries.

Modding doesn’t bother me… it’s the piracy that bothers me. If you were to never buy it in the first place, why even bother with it then? I’m willing to bet if there were no alternative means of getting it, you’d have bought it…

I agree with the people above that this is a huge waste of tax money and also show out government’s completely mixed up set of priorities. It’s simply another case of corporations getting the special treatment and the benefit of our tax money.

No it isn’t exaggerated. I pay taxes and my car was stolen from me. Did I get federal agents on the case? NO, I got little more then “Fill this out and we’ll let you know if we come up with anything” at the local Police station.

There’s more drug dealers then cops in most towns in America. Surely I’d rather see my tax money go towards ridding the country of them.

Did you know there’s actually people still starving in the US?
“33 million Americans continue to live in households that did not have an adequate supply of food. Nearly one-third of these households contain adults or children who went hungry at some point in 2000″

Did you know there are still victims of Katrina living in FEMA trailers with seemingly no salvation in sight?

Did you know that approximately three quarters of our education system is underfunded, run down and in most cases classes are taught by substandard non qualified teachers?

I really could go on for hours pointing out many, many things of this nature but I think you have the picture.

So, myself and MANY other Americans are not “exaggerating” when we say that this is a huge waste of tax payer’s dollars because that is simply what it is. There are so many more important issues that should take precedent over this useless crap. It makes me sick to my stomach..

The reality is these are two different things. It’s like
screwing your sister in law vs looking at her twice because
she’s sexy. You can argue the 2nd is wrong but most of the
culture accepts it as reality because we’re human.

Key to this argument is fair use. You can argue that
someone copying discs illegally and playing them for
extended periods is breaking the law. Most of these
techies are learning to make PC’s in a console do
new things. Sure they might throw in a copied game
but it didn’t make them lose a sale any more than
arguing video rental stores exist to keep people from
having to buy DVD’s. I’m sorry but I rent a DVD, watch
a movie and return it *because* I’d never buy it…
Arguing that Blockbuster enabled me to use the studio’s
intellectual property without buying it is just silly.
The same applies here…

the stuff with spending taxpayers hard earned cash thats exaggerated… just think about all the people that are in the loop when it comes to intelectual property. you have programmers, designers, managers, directors, marketing, sales are these people not paying enough taxes, in order for their products to be protected. when you look at a corporation you look at the money that they make not at the thousands of people that they employ and manage, that have a job and a decent living because of that corporation.

now i understand you want to put a mod in you’re xbox to give it some extra features… but what’s next xbox 360 and ps3…now that’s a different story. these consoles are, from what i read, equivalent to a approximately a $2000 gaming pc. Now if u put a mod in one of these systems and transform it into a pc…won’t other companies loose money to? not only ms and sony….which anyway loose money every time someone buys one.

I know not everyone is this honest but chances are they would not have purchased the game anyway.

Entertainment started with people who felt a strong urge to demonstrate their talents to others and to get others’ appreciation. Some people who really liked entertainer’s performance and were capable, would give them something from their posessions. Then it became a custom as entertainment became a business. In my opinion, even after thusands of years of evolution, our subconscious perspective for entertainers still is the same. I’ll only pay if I feel like otherwise not. Don’t we all have had experiences when we would give any money to a street-guitarist just because his music uplifted our mood and at the same time would not watch a movie of million-dollar earning movie star even when its coming for free on a movie channel.

Everybody talks about efforts of programmers, movie actors and you-know-what but what if I pay for a game/movie/music expecting it is going to be good, but does not provide entertainment to my satisfaction, who returns my money back? and what about my time that I spent on it?

Piracy is good! Stealing is a crime!

Every good thing in the life should be FREE!

If you take a BMW, the dealer is out a single car. If you take the designs and can make them, the dealers are out many cars.

Think of what would happen if Nintendo were to take all the Final Fantasy games (at least the ones not out on a Nintendo console) and put them on a Nintendo console? I love Nintendo, but even I would admit, that would be downright wrong, but they would not be taking anything physical, had FFX mysteriously appeared on the Gamecube, but more damage would have been done than if Nintendo hired someone to steal one of the games from the store.

Copyright infrengement is worse for a company than someone physically stealing their product.

There may be bigger crimes out there, but for the resources you could spend on cathing, for instance, the Zodiac Killer, you could catch 10 thousand people doing this. The Zodiac Killer obviously did something much worse, but when you consider the resources spent on catching a murder, rapest, or burgler, it seems like catching a few people for copy right infrengement is a decent, if not totally even trade off.

End result, while there are worse crimes out there, its harder to catch and prosicute for those worse crimes, comsuming more time and resources, so its a better use of resources to catch a wide variety of criminals, getting a lot of small time criminals sent to jail, but also nailing the big time criminals as well.

Imagine you were to somehow get the complete production specs of a BMW and built said BMW in your garage. If BMW ever found out, you would find yourself in criminal and civil court for, guess what, copyright infringement… among other things.

Or, perhaps you put on a concert featuring you playing your cover of your favorite musician’s signature song to thousands of your fans. If you didn’t get permission from the artist, songwriter, record label, you should expect to get arrested and sued.

I’m all for people working away to “build a better mousetrap”, but if in your pursuit of improvement you violate someone else’s right to profit from their labor, then you should be arrested.

it sucks but its true.

Would I pirate a copy of Halo 3 for example (selling for upwards of $70)? Yeah, I could see wanting to.

But how would you feel, spending on average 3 years developing a game, and then discovering that it was getting pirated to hell?
I dont think piracy is ever going to be beaten outright but I honestly feel that a developer should get the respect of a couple years of earnings off their work – so what if in 5 years time when the game becomes 2nd hand and unmarketed that a few devotees go out and distribute it on the net.

But the Wii hasnt even been out a year. I’m sorry, but I have to side with Nintendo on this one. Its not like they are out waging war on ROM and Emulator sites or anything, for supplying game images from 15 years ago.

If games weren’t such a rip-off i.e $60 for some high end titles maybe people wouldn’t be tempted to circumvent piracy laws. We all need to fight back against the BS piracy laws in this country, and have some common sense.