| BenKenobi88 said: Hypothetically speaking: If pirating was impossible - if downloading mp3s, movies, games, whatever was completely impossible for every person in the world - there would be an increase in music, movies, and games sales. You say you download something because you wouldn't buy it anyway. That may be...but if you had absolutely no access to certain music...and your only option is to buy it...would you? I'm certain many people would buy more music because they couldn't just quick download it for free instead. If piracy is significantly reduced, I'm sure you'd see an increase in media sales. |
No. Because I wouldn't have heard of half the songs that I've heard my friends download who's CDs i've bought. A lot of my friends buy CDS of people they'd of never heard of if not for file sharing. If in my younger days when i emulated, had I not bought Tactics Ogre I would have never bought it for the SNES, nor would I have ever bought Disgaea, La Pucelle Tacitcs, Final Fantasy Tactics, Hoshigamai Ruining Blue Earth, Phantom Brave, Front Mission 3, Gladius, Future Tactics Suikoden Tactics, Sukioden 4 (so i knew what the heck tactics was about) and a number of other countless tactics games.
There are plenty of factors and studies that show infact if pirating was nearly impossible sales would not increase statistically and might even decrease, but once again it would not be by a statistically measurable margin. That pirating in countries where it is illegal, the benfits and negatives outway each other. The above example just being one of the many examples of piracy.
In countries like China where it's pretty much illegal yes sales would increase... but even then by a far lesser margin then you would think, because people have limited incomes as it is.
So you may think it so that media sales would increase, but in countries like the USA, you would be dead wrong.
Is it wrong morals wise? Yeah sure. Does it actually hurt someone financially. Not in the US. That doesn't matter too much however, since the morale reasons should be enough one way or another.
