US government finally admits most piracy estimates are bogus

[greenmedic88]

That whole exchange was more of an argument of semantics than anything else.

Comparing theft vs. copyright infringement as though stealing a case of video game inventory or downloading an entire back catalog of a publisher's games are somehow not considered similarly detrimental to the industry if the number of people who did this outweighed the number of paying customers.

So "make products people would rather pay for than take for free" goes the argument. Meaning; take for free or basically steal, or "borrow" if you just want to download it, play it and then "keep it honest" by immediately deleting it after.

But if it's that bad, there's no reason to even bother downloading something illegally in the first place, even if there was no demo to be found and there weren't a load of reviews stating whether the game was worth your time and for what reasons. Word of mouth should be enough in such rare instances if you actually talk to people with similar game tastes.

But of course, in most cases, there will be reviews, and in many cases, there will be a legit demo for those who "just want to try it out" rather than "I just want to play through the whole game and if I deem it worthy, I will pay for a copy when I can buy it for less than $20." Or $10, or $5, or whatever and still feel good about "supporting the industry."

Kind of like sneaking into a movie theater and then buying a ticket as you leave "if the movie was good." Or maybe leaving a $5 bill or a $1 on the ticket counter if it was decent. And if not saying "but I didn't steal anything!"

Unfortunately, it doesn't really work like that.

About the only legit argument I can accept, neither condoning nor condemning, is in the case of someone who just doesn't have the $ or rubles or yuan or whatever to support their gaming habits, and like anyone who needs a continual fix, will find a way to get what they want through illegitimate means if they simply can't afford it.

There probably isn't a significant number of such people, any more than there are people like this who will work hard at earning a larger paycheck so they can "go legit" and start paying for what they used to get for free previously.

The noble pirate ("data wants to be free" translated as "I don't want to pay for data") is probably a lot rarer than anyone who tries to justify it is willing to admit.

Basically, if you really don't want to pay for something, don't try to justify your actions if you resort to other means to get it for free. And definitely don't try to ease your conscience by saying "I'm not stealing anything, I'm only infringing on copyrights!" which frankly, just sounds like a really lame excuse.