In defence of piracy

[Baalzamon]

mZuzek said:

Baalzamon said:
You are justifying theft based on potential benefit down the road to the company. It is still...theft.

If I steal a car, I'm driving it down the road (thus advertising it), and heck, may even like it enough that I eventually buy more cars of that brand. But that doesn't mean I didn't still steal the original car.

I've heard the argument a million times, and while I personally don't report anybody who is doing this (it just isn't worth my time), stop lying to yourself that you aren't still stealing.

The same could be said about lots of rules. One could murder somebody they deem a bad person, and think they are overall helping society as a result. It is still murder.

Yeah, except for how it's nothing like theft or murder at all. When you steal a car, you took that car away from someone else. If you killed someone, you took that person's life. Piracy is like if you made a copy of someone's car and then drove it down the road, you didn't do anything harmful to that car's owner, only to the companies making cars which are not going to benefit from your money. Since there's no real artistic value in car manufacturing, it being very much just a business, I think most people wouldn't actually find anything wrong with that. Copy a car you like, drive it everywhere, have fun. What's not to love? (lol)

Sure, there are laws and piracy isn't allowed by them. That's fine. Good, even. If there were no laws against piracy, piracy would be all there is and capitalism would break in five seconds. But not everything that's illegal is 100% wrong, morally or socially. Piracy can be of benefit to the artists behind stuff, unlike theft or murder.

sethnintendo said:
I thought it was because you are from Brazil and video games as expensive as fuck there.

And here you have a good example. Yeah, piracy has always been rampant in Brazil because of how expensive games are, and especially because of how bad our economy is (and also because there's a generally shit mentality about mostly everyone). You know what consoles thrived here, that absolutely everyone had? PS2, and DS. Those are the best-selling consoles in history, and it's because of piracy, it's because everyone in 3rd world countries could afford games for them. Yeah, that's bad for the software and their developers, but the reality is that piracy was a big reason why the best-selling consoles were the best-selling consoles.

So what you are saying is...because something isn't physical, it doesn't equate to the same type of theft. Lets use an extreme example. Company spends $100M on a game. They proceed to get 0 sales. They did have 10 million people however, who copied the game. It didn't actually cost the company any money each time somebody copied the game, so there is nothing wrong with it. While an extreme example, it illustrates how regardless of it being a digital asset, it DOES still certainly cost the company money. If I put time and effort into making something, I absolutely don't want anybody to enjoy that for free just because they have some bogus excuse that it's too expensive for them or it didn't cost me anything anyways.

What is it that makes you feel you are entitled to that game? Why do you feel such an urge to assure others that this is ok? It is theft, plain and simple. I don't quite frankly care how much video games cost in any one region, if they aren't within your budget...then you shouldn't be playing video games.

I would absolutely love to buy about 50 games per year, but unfortunately don't make remotely close to enough money for that, therefore I proceed to buy 1-2.

That being said, I think it really comes down to, regardless of whether somebody would or wouldn't have bought an item, I don't think that is what qualifies something as theft. Many thieves would never have bought an item, but they take it so they can gain from it (and being able to play a game you otherwise couldn't play is certainly gaining).