Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Mountain ManBut here is something to think about: countless works of art have been lost throughout human history, and will continue to be lost. Are we worse off as a species because of it?

Yes, we bloody well are. You know that old question, what would you do if you had a time machine and could use it just once? You have no idea how many people answer that question, "Would go and rescue the books from the Library of Alexandria"; although my mother leans towards "Would go stop the fire that burned down the building that held all the Anglo Saxon literature that was ever written down".

You say that we're worse off as a species because the Library of Alexandria was destroyed. I'm curious in what way you think we're worse off, and what your basis is for claiming so.

Getting into deep philosophy here. In what way or for what reasons can you say any person, let alone the species, is "better off"? Any basis you propose can be readily disputed.

I personally think it is better to have wisdom than lack it, better to have knowledge than lack it, better to have stories than lack them. Being better off is not just about how many calories you consume. Many works of great philosophers, many accounts of history and mythology, were lost. Just having the missing Aristotle stuff would probably make a surprising difference to our thinking, considering how foundational the stuff we do have is. And as I recall, we know there is missing Aristotle stuff because other people's commentaries have referred to it. It's not just in physics where new thinkers stand on the shoulders of giants; philosophical and political thought also builds on the ideas of the past, and if we'd had more of them to build on, our whole intellectual tradition would be richer.

The only reason I asked is because you can't possibly answer without begging the question. :happy:

I'll hop in here for my fellow GURPS player; Imagine as it were that the internet and all it's knowledge was one day erased. You could no longer look up answers on wikipedia, you could no longer search for stepsister pr0n. All knowledge of scientific discoveries were only kept in the brains of old people that would eventually die off.

The burning of the library of Alexandria is pretty much the ancient equivalent of that. People from all over the (known to the Old world) world would go to Alexandria to study everything about science, philosophy, religion, etc. The burning of Alexandria literally started what many historians refer to as 'the dark ages'. We didn't have anything similar until the renaissance. Now imagine if we were about 1400-1500 years more advanced than we are now... Granted maybe we would have destroyed ourselves 300 years ago :P

Funny. All of you have NO IDEA how the library of Alexandria got such a large collection of texts.
Basically every ship that stopped in the port of Alexandria got searched for texts (papyri etc.) and everything that was found was brought to the library where it was COPIED and the originals were given back to the ship.

Yes, the librarians of ancient Alexandria were FILTHY PIRATES. They should have been hanged for such a large scale operation in COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.

Good thing the library of Alexandria burned down! And a sad thing the criminals didn’t burn with it.

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I don’t understand the effort, as most gamers will pirate it anyway.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Mountain ManBut here is something to think about: countless works of art have been lost throughout human history, and will continue to be lost. Are we worse off as a species because of it?

Yes, we bloody well are. You know that old question, what would you do if you had a time machine and could use it just once? You have no idea how many people answer that question, "Would go and rescue the books from the Library of Alexandria"; although my mother leans towards "Would go stop the fire that burned down the building that held all the Anglo Saxon literature that was ever written down".

You say that we're worse off as a species because the Library of Alexandria was destroyed. I'm curious in what way you think we're worse off, and what your basis is for claiming so.

Getting into deep philosophy here. In what way or for what reasons can you say any person, let alone the species, is "better off"? Any basis you propose can be readily disputed.

I personally think it is better to have wisdom than lack it, better to have knowledge than lack it, better to have stories than lack them. Being better off is not just about how many calories you consume. Many works of great philosophers, many accounts of history and mythology, were lost. Just having the missing Aristotle stuff would probably make a surprising difference to our thinking, considering how foundational the stuff we do have is. And as I recall, we know there is missing Aristotle stuff because other people's commentaries have referred to it. It's not just in physics where new thinkers stand on the shoulders of giants; philosophical and political thought also builds on the ideas of the past, and if we'd had more of them to build on, our whole intellectual tradition would be richer.

Did Aristotle ever get paid? You have no morale right to Aristotle’s stuff. You shouldn’t have access to anything he wrote. A shame that not more works are lost in time. There shouldn’t survive any work at all. Pirates are citing Aristotle everywhere without shame - as it shows they read a work without paying for it.

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I would say that all of you are not going far enough! I would say burn all the art! And while we’re at it, let’s burn ALL the books, too! Then we wouldn’t have this stupid discussion as there would be no more art to “preserve/pirate”.

My friends and me did this book burning in 1933…it was fun!

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: benstor214

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: benstor214“People who emulate games are all committing piracy.”

I can't remember somebody saying this. Could you cite it please?

That’s the nice thing: you don’t need to! You just have to murky the waters and blur the line between emulation, game preservation and piracy. You only need to place one group near to the other and subsequently insinuate that there is no difference between both groups at all. Sooner than not game preservationists are deemed criminal and Nintendo’s upper management opens a bottle of champagne to celebrate the successes of the hard-working minions in forums and comment sections.

I prefer people citing what has actually been said and react to that instead of making up quotes. It always makes it look like they wouldn't trust their arguments enough.

You are right. Consumers don’t need rights anyway.
Most of them even smell badly in my experience.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: benstor214“People who emulate games are all committing piracy.”

I can't remember somebody saying this. Could you cite it please?

That’s the nice thing: you don’t need to! You just have to murky the waters and blur the line between emulation, game preservation and piracy. You only need to place one group near to the other and subsequently insinuate that there is no difference between both groups at all. Sooner than not game preservationists are deemed criminal and Nintendo’s upper management opens a bottle of champagne to celebrate the successes of the hard-working minions in forums and comment sections.

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“People who emulate games are all committing piracy.”
“People who mod their games are all cheaters.”

“The newest DENUVO anti-tamper breaks all your mods and now you are criticizing anti-tamper measures? But anti-tamper prevents pesky cheaters from cheating! Certainly you don’t want people to cheat in the game you like? Maybe you are a cheater YOURSELF?!”

Game preservation = piracy
Game modification = cheating

My hobbies are being a apologist for anti-consumer behavior and licking the boots of big, multi-national corporations.

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Description: Most recent photographic reproduction of penglin. Taken Wed May 24 20:26:03 2023 UTC (1684959963) near FSFmember’s house.

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Quoting: FSFmemberHopefully not due to a medical problem on my side

Huh… medical problem?? No, ehm, as we all understood it, Pengling will just straight up kill you. Right, guys? Right?

/s
For this post I will burn in hell haha

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1. Emulation does not equal piracy.
2. Actual studies show the vast majority of people who pirate would have never bought a legal copy. To say „But there are SOME that would have!“ is just stating irrelevant facts on the global scale.
3. The sole reason that there is already a well working emulator for the Nintendo Switch is that the first models could be easily hacked because of a vulnerability in the TEGRA chip.

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