Piracy not theft because its a copy..

[dunno001]

Nope, sorry, piracy is still theft, it's just a matter of who you're stealing from. Let's say that there are 10,000 copies of a game sold through to retailers. But, through piracy, there are 11,000 people who own the game. Retailers have sold all 10K, so they're happy, but the publisher doesn't see anything from those other 1000 units. Thus, you've stolen from the publisher. Now, in the case of what pirates like to call "theft" to try to justify their illegal actions, again, say those 10K copies were sold to retailers. However, retailers only sell 9000 of the copies, the other 1000 are stolen from the shelves. The publisher has been paid for all the copies, but now the retailer is out what they paid for those copies, meaning you've stolen from the retailer instead. Put both of these together to simulate a real world, and you have 11K copies out there, 1000 of which the developer was never paid for (stolen from developer) and another 1000 that was not sold through (stolen from retailer). It means less income for everyone across the board, and thus, higher prices for those of us who play by the rules.

Next, there's the used market. Yes, this can be seen as hurting the publisher, as they sell 10K again, but 12K people could wind up playing it. Unfortunately for them, though, this is not illegal, as per the right of first sale. If I buy something, I can choose to do what I want with the physical copy, including sell it off should I choose. In my case, the only times I buy used anymore are because the game is just not availiable new. Hell, just this past weekend, I got a couple of Atari 2600 games! Atari and Activision aren't going to sell me those new even if I asked them directly! (Although ironically, as of 10 years ago, Atari still did have a few 2600 games to sell new. They were all common ones that can be found used for sub-$1, though.) However, it is not stolen from the publisher; they've made 10K copies, 10K copies exist, and they've been paid for 10K copies. They just happen to be in some different hands now.

And lastly, I saw someone mention something about trying it. I don't have the numbers for video games, but I do have the numbers for anime. And the fact remains that the AAA titles don't suffer. It's the B titles that get slaughtered in sales, from people "trying" the item. The number of people who "try, then buy" is much smaller than the number of people who "try, play out, and never buy". On the AAA titles, there's enough people buying that it can still profit. But go below that, and those lost sales can be what makes or breaks a game. And enough breaks could put that company out of business.