This is in the signature of one of our users.

It's logic is wholefully flawed yet it is the root of many people's reasoning to continue being software pirates. While you are not removing the original product, you are removing profit from the company and indirectly, the future income for the software developers.

So you are commiting theft of income in the long term. You are effectively reaching into the pocket of some hard working software engineer and taking out his child's school lunch money. Especially if that company closes down or is forced to reduce its labor force.

This is why I refuse to copy a game/music/movie etc. Because it is not right to think that you are so above everyone else that you do not have to financially recognize someone else's hard work and effort.

Nearly all PC games have demos, so the idea that you want to play it first is bullshit, your simply a thief who deserves their hands cut. Even music has plenty of free, legal avenues to listen to it first before you buy.

This is the end of my rant, carry on.

#1 Chances are they wouldn't have bought the game in the first place.

#2 Pirates save kids from heart disease. The school lunch money being taken means that the faimly is on a budget and thus the parents have to scale back. The kids probably no longer eat KFC every night and instead have home cooked meals because they are cheaper. The families should be thanking pirates to be honest.

This is the end of my convoluted rant rebuttle

You nailed it right on. I hate it when pirates use that argument to justify their stealing.

It all depends on whether you would have bought the game if you hadn't pirated it.

Claiming piracy is not theft is roughly the equivalent of saying printing your own money (ie counterfeiting) is also not wrong.

"I'm not stealing any money; I'm just making more of it!"

Claiming piracy potentially saves lives through the preservation of health is also the equivalent of saying stealing food for those on a strict budget (or worse) is morally right as well.

It's a known fact that healthier, more nutritious, less processed food is more expensive than highly processed pre-prepared foods. But I won't even venture to throw out the argument that stealing money or materials of value for the purpose of eating healthier has any sort of moral high ground either.

NJ5 - And what are the chances that you'd buy the product THANKS to the pirated copy?

If you pirate a game, the company receives $0.
If you don't pirate a game, and never buy, the company receives $0.

The difference is that one runs a greater possibility that you'd actually buy the product in question. Why would you EVER buy something you already 'own' via piracy?

I think, though, on the other end: Game companies need to re-think their strategies in pirate-laden countries. The reason they are doing this is due to the crazy costs associated with multimedia in emerging markets. It would be nice if companies took a new approach to such places, and worked with piracy distribution systems to sell the copies at a better price to those that otherwise may not get a chance to buy them. Microsoft could make a killing in Brazil if they offered their entire collection at $20 a disc

They'll do anything to justify it, but deep down they know they are doing something wrong, and enjoying a product that somebody made to live and make money, without paying for it. I see a lot of them saying, "well I only buy the good games, the other crap I will just pirate, it helps clean the industry of crappy developers". That makes very little sense to me though. Why would you go through the trouble of modding a console(s), just so you can play bad games? I doubt they even buy the good games, they just keep saying they will and they are trying them out for a moment, until they just blow it off completely. It is very sad. In the music and movie industry it is different though. These media's are much much more mainstream than gaming, and almost everybody enjoys them. The average person probably doesn't even know what they are doing, or think too much about it. They just download it, because it is convenient and go on. This is the worst kind, because it spreads so quickly and easily. I'm at least happy gaming piracy is somewhat contained.

Piracy makes it hard for the Honest people to enjoy their products, and harder for them to afford them..

With Piracy devs have to make more advanced copy protected apps, thus making it harder to get games, media, applications to work on your unit.

If a company is selling less of something year after year they have to raise prices to meet the cost, also the cost to develop more advanced copy protection cost more..

but... it's the developers fault for not making a working version of the copy protection and making it harder for people to enjoy the products they buy..

Like Sony's PS2 Slim and how some games don't even play on the unit, and other games like Fallout 3, almost impossible to play on your PC if you have a CD/DvD burning software installed on your PC.

It's funny how they claim piracy isn't theft.

Piracy is like religion where everyone has their own opinion on what it's all about.