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Comment by nomel | Hacker News Reader

Are you aware of any cases where they didn't refund [1]?

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...

I don't think that's the point. If the industry is going to regularly make me go through incessant cycles of purchasing, getting refunded, rebuying (for the same price?) then I'm going to pirate the content. What an absolutely absurd expectation.

I thought the point was ownership and how flimsy ownership lead to Piracy. Not a personal rant on how your bad customer service experience justifies your decision to pirate.

I don't care if people "steal" from billion dollar corporations. But let's not mince words and pretend it's some Robin Hood act of altruism. The companies already took that piracy into account on their budget book anyway; they won't change their ways over this.

That whole Gabe Newell quote about "piracy is a service issue" goes both ways. Piracy isn't always convinent and plenty of people don't wanna set up plex servers and search torrents and organize their library to get "the best experience". They just want to turn on device and play/watch/read seemlessly

So from your perspective it would be oke if randomly thieves enter your home, "take" some stuff from you and leaving behind a calling card so you can arrange to get paid for it.

This metaphor breaks down because you don't own the servers hosting the stuff in question. It's not your house to begin with.

And it's not my point at all in that comment. I'm just saying most 'thieves' aren't trying to prove they are good people by stealing like how piracy arguments oh so often go here. Nor trying to pretend they are archivist saving artifacts from disappearing off the face of the earth. They are either greedy, desperate to survive, and in a few rare cases a pathological disorder.

It's premium entertainment, and people either want to consume a product but dont/can't pay. It's that simple. and I'm not saying that from a judgmental POV either. I've done it quite a bit as a grade schooler.

The entire point is indeed that you can't own it. You saying it's not comparable because you don't own the servers is non-sensical. It's not like you can choose not use the servers. Well you can. You have to pirate it.

There's plenty (most of the) comments talking about ownership, I have nothing more to add on that topic. It's only tangentially related to my main point in that it's an argument used to defend piracy. And it's IMO a futile argument because people can't agree what "ownership" is.

For me, I try to find drm free copies of games when possible, or physical media when that fails. That's enough for me to feel "ownership".

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I simply wanted to talk about the internet attitude towards piracy in this thread. I've done it but I never boasted around about slaying some corrupt corporation by ripping an ISO off a disc, or simply finding a torrent.

No, I did it to either not pay for a game or to mod games with no native mod support. I'm not a good person to begin with and I don't pretend I'm a good person by pirating.

What? Unilaterally refunding a purchase I made years ago isn't "bad customer service". It's just a company being shitty and not caring. I am the party that acted in good faith and purchased the content! What are you even talking about?

Companies don't like refunding either in all fairness. And your phrasing makes it sound like this happens to you regularly.

I don't think "refund" is the best use of word here. That's usually a customer returning a product. And a company with bad refund policies tends to have bad customer service.

What good is that? If I buy a book or a movie I want to own it forever not until the company decides to take it back regardless of giving a refund…

Yes. When the old online Dominion lost the license to the Dominion card game, they didn't refund buyers with cash; they refunded the buyers with some kind of digital dollars to spend on their other unattractive products. So essentially every dollar spent on Dominion expansions was lost. Really soured me on the idea of purchasing online board games.

"We broke into your house last night and took that book off the shelf. But we left 20 bucks on the counter so it's ok!"

In the case in that link, the publisher was not legitimate. Amazon (literally) sold a pirated copy. They refunded, allowing you to buy a non-pirated copy. The alternative would be to swap it out for a copy from a legitimate publisher, but I assume there are laws around swapping goods out from under people.

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