Piracy not theft because its a copy..

[L.C.E.C.]

So, I have a question...

When you buy second-hand CD's, who gets the money? Not the RIAA, much less the Musician (who hardly makes any money anyway). The store gets all the money.

When you buy used books, does the author make money? No. The store keeps all the profits and uses them to buy more stuff to sell.

When you buy used games, does the developer get money? No. The store keeps all of the profits.

When you buy used movies, do the filmmakers get money? No. The store keeps all of the profits.

All of the money goes back to the store, who invests the money however they see fit.

So who are you ripping off? GameStop (and other such stores). Wait, doesn't GameStop rip off everyone it buys used games off of? Yes. So really, when you pirate games instead of buying used (I'm sure that's an option people consider first), then you're just ripping off GameStop.

When you sell your used items to the stores, do they really give you an adequate amount of money? No, they give you 1/10th of what they sell it for. If you could sell your game to another person directly for the same price, you would both win by cutting out the middle man.

This isn't possible though, because if an individual tried to compete with a franchise, they would always lose. In the same effect, in order for a game to be pirated, someone has to buy it, just like in order to have a used game, someone has to have bought it.

You could try eBay, ect. but at that point there are problems like these:
1.eBay gets profits like GameStop.
2.The buyer has to pay shipping.
3.The person who buys it used always takes a risk in it being broken or malfunctioned.
4.You have to wait a long time, or pay a higher shipping fee.
5.You're just giving some of your money back to the person who will use that money for whatever purpose they see fit.

Before everybody jumps on my nuts, I'm not a major game pirate.

I admit to pirating a couple of things (Mailny games that have been published around 5 times, games that are hard to find and buy, games that aren't brought overseas, and games I've already bought before). If you buy half of your games at full new price, and pirated half of them (I don't do this, but whatever), then you would be giving more money to the developer than the guy who buys 90% of his games used.

So no, I don't feel guilty for ripping off GameStop every once & a while. I wouldn't have a problem with ever pirating again (in terms of games), if digital distribution cut the price in half, but it won't. In a perfect world, no-one would pirate, and the prices would drop (in terms of games once again). But this isn't a perfect world. People are paid very little for no reason sometimes, and people like Steve Jobs get rich off of selling other people's music off and retaining bigger profits than the artists who come up with the music. Everyone is trying to leech off each other, and I think it's always gonna be that way.