US government finally admits most piracy estimates are bogus

[Slimebeast]

NJ5 said:

Zucas said:

Slimebeast said:
Yes piracy is theft. You steal a service, someones creation.

For technical reasons in the law piracy is not defined as theft. But the law doesn't own the meaning of words, they have their definition of words and phrases.

Whether piracy hurts the economy or not is not interesting in my opinion. Someone steals something and lets other people pay for it, it's wrong.

Well to be fair, there isn't too much difference in copyright infringement and theft.  Really, it only seems to be the resulting penalty that differs too much because they insinuate the same moral concept: that which isn't yours doesn't belong to you without compensation or consent.  Personally, I think the main reason has to do with the idea of theft being associated with a physical loss which is rather outdated for our society. 

It's not only about a physical loss. Physical or not, much of piracy doesn't cause a loss at all (which is one of the things pointed out in the article by the new study).

 

To the overall economy on average, no.

But it's like distribution of wealth - one guy can afford a medium PC with 10 purchased games, while the other guy pirates the 10 games and can afford a high-end PC with the $500 extra he saved from not buying any of the games.