The first thing we have to address here is the matter of language, and Twesterm, you do need to pay attention to this part if you want to either (a) contribute to the discussion, or (b) convince people of your stance.
In this context, we cannot take "steal" to be equivalent with "piracy" - the language is unnecessarily divisive, and we have the two different words because they have two different meanings in this specific context. If we don't acknowledge this point, then we're not going to get anywhere.
In this context, I propose that we define theft and piracy as follows:
Theft (or "stealing"): To deprive a producer or distributor of a piece or quantity of goods which affects the amount of money that they will take in by removing goods that they produced. Always, always, ALWAYS costs the producer money, or at the least costs the distributor money. This hurts somebody, somewhere.
Piracy: To obtain a copy of a piece of software (intellectual property rather than physical property) without paying for it. May affect the bottom line or may not depending on the situation of the person doing the pirating, and whether or not they have the ability to purchase a piece of IP legally (keep in mind this has nothing to do with the will to do so).
Now, we have to agree on these points. There can be no arguing here: these words are different, have their own specific meanings, and in this context cannot be used interchangeably. If you're not willing to concede this point on either side of the discussion, you might as well pack up your bags and go.
Now, given that this is the case, we need to establish what each person is arguing. Tell me if I've got this right:
Twesterm is arguing that it is wrong to experience things for which one has not paid, regardless of whether or not it affects the monetary income of the producer or distributor. From this, it is also immoral to pirate SNES, NES, or region-specific games, because playing games without paying for them is intrinsically immoral.
Scottie is arguing that it is all right to experience things for which one has not paid in a case where it does not prevent one from giving what one can to the producers, i.e. it's okay to pirate one game and buy one game if one cannot afford to buy 2. From this, the situation which Johann has described, where an entire country pirates because games are priced at a level that is prohibitive to GDP per capita, is moral.
Is that the size of these arguments?
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