2 million out of 500 million isn't that much anyway.

Yeah, I don't know where people get the idea of piracy = stealing. They are two very different things.

This!

It's like saying......oh hey, I was gonna sell a TV for $600 to a potential buyer till a friend convinced him to get a different one....

I JUST LOST $600, DAMN THAT THIEF!

Pirating is theft, but it's different from physical theft - nothing physical is lost, and doesn't have to be replaced which means there's no actual direct loss.

I always hate these types of threads because they get packed with white knights that don't use common sense.

 Read through them. Its still taking something that is not there's.

Alright this post might get a little long so bear with me.

How am i not reasonable? Ive read other threads on the same subject and heard what people have to say. I still dont agree and this is just how i feel. I'm not worried at all about being without games from big publishers (WTF is with the Cod tid bit) most of the harm i was talking about was geared toward smaller companies. I just view the whole subject as if i had created the product and was trying to sell it how would i feel if someone else took what i made without giving me anything in return. There is so many ways to figure out if you like a game enough to buy it like written reviews, video reviews, demos, gameplay footage, 60 min degrading demos, barrowing a friends copy, comercials. You can do those long enough to figure out if you want the game or not. Im not saying its illegal and your absolutely going to jail, i am sure it depends on where you are and how you obtained the property. Also I am not saying piracy is all bad and it doesnt have any positives. To me it all boils down to this it doesnt matter if its physical/intellectual property you cant just take it without buying it or getting permission its stealing. Its more of a moral issue for me just admit that its stealing and you dont care or some other excuse, just dont try to hide behind the i wouldnt have bought it anyway or whatever. Heres a source for a good read.

"It is amazing that the mere mention of the concept intellectual property rights can elicit vastly different reactions in ordinary people, from complete indifference, causing the eyes to glaze over and the head to nod, to sheer panic, where the eyes widen and the heart pounds. Yet it is true. It all depends, of course, on whether that person has been affected by such rights, if at all. The term intellectual property, which has only been in existence since 1967, refers to a number of different rights: trademarks, patents,service marks and copyright.

Most people have difficulty understanding intellectual property rights, partly because of their abstract nature; they appear as just a bundle of invisible rights. Moreover, intellectual property rights are so complicated that it is easier to pretend they do not exist and to ignore them rather than to try to comprehend them. However, ignorance is no protection under the law - as many ordinary people have found out at their own expense. New international legislation regarding copyright has changed the way the public interacts with information, and as Bill Thompson, a commentator for the BBCWorld Service programme Go Digital, points out, the new legislation could make criminals of any one of us. Simply by using peer-to-peer network software to share unlicensed copies of films and music we could be breaking the law (Thompson 2003) .

How have we reached a situation where ordinary people can so easily find themselves breaking the law without even realising it? The answer lies in the changes to copyright law.

Copyright

Copyright law is concerned with protecting individuals' expression of ideas in the form of creative works; it does not protect the ideas themselves. "Copyright gives the creators of a wide range of material, such as literature, art, music, sound recordings, films and broadcasts, economic rights enabling them to control use of their material in a number of ways, such as by making copies, issuing copies to the public, performing in public, broadcasting and use on-line. Copyright also gives moral rights to be identified as the creator of certain kinds of material, and to object to distortion or mutilation of it. The purpose of copyright is to allow creators to gain economic rewards for their efforts and so encourage future creativity and the development of new material, which benefits us all" (UK Patent Office 2001)""

http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/internet/overview.php

Two final little things whats with the condescending nature of your post. And would you go to jail for dating a 17 y/o if you were older i thought you would have had to had sex with them in order for it to be illegal. 

Sorry for going off topic.

But thats only 50k pirates.
I'm pretty sure that games like GTA San Andreas, God of War and PES have at least 1 million pirated copies only in Latin America, maybe even more.

But I think that thing are improving. There are a lot of people that went legal because of PS3(myself included) and that don't go back anymore.

In the PS2 era i've heard of people that had more than 1000 games.

Talking about illegal downloading regarding music, if copyright infringement is not theft, then explain how that many teenagers today have never bought any music, EVER!!!  I'm a songwriter/producer, and when I check out some forums such as soompi.com, which is a Korean drama and pop music forum, many members have never bought music, at all, period.  And the concept of using their allowance to buy music, like I did when I was a teenager, is an inconceivable idea to most of them.   And yet, in national research, many teenagers value their music collection above everything else, more than movies or games.  You're telling me that if they didn't have access to the internet, they would have no music at all??   Bullshit.

Don't tell me that illegal downloading is not affecting music sales.  Not all songwriters perform their own music and the very best pure songwriters like Diane Warren and Craig Wiseman don't sing their own music, and thank god, because I've heard Craig Wiseman try to sing his own songs before and he's a horrible singer but he's an incredible songwriter (he wrote 'Live Like You Were Dying' and many others).  And if you ask legendary songwriter Lamont Dozier, he said that his royalties have been cut by 60% in the last decade by illegal downloading.  And in Nashville, staff songwriter positions have virtually disappeared.  So don't tell me it's not stealing, because that's BS.

Pirates??

MPAA and RIAA. They pumped a lot of money into politics to push just that.

Just like how Apple kept resubmitting their patent for slide-to-unlock, keep trying and trying and eventually someone will let it through.

Piracy will eventually become theft. They just need to pay the politicians enough to pass the law. Everyone and everything has a price.