@BW_JP: See, this is the difference between the two of us. I'm not judging the situation based on my personal bias.

Nobody is saying piracy doesn't hurt the sales of a product, just calling out the often outrageous claims about its impact.

Things aren't black and white you know, just because people don't see pirates as child molesters, rapists and killers, doesn't mean the people would support piracy.

I think it is rather odd, the route these IP holders have taken to try and secure their "potential" profits. What is an Intellectual Property anyway? Short story: it is a government sanctioned monopoly over and idea. In terms of macroeconomics (large scale economy), it is a flat out retarded move.

Why? Simple, monopolies maximize profits by minimizing marginal benefits to the population. i.e. You pay more & you get less. Yes, this is nice for the head honchos that scrape by on multimillion dollar bonuses each year while clearing out unessessary costs by say laying off 15,000 workers. The American dream for one man, The American nightmare for many... People fear loosing their jobs now days because the market is starting to canabalize itself. Wallstreet is going back up and unemployment is still through the roof, what gives?

Well, besides profit maximizing greed that americans have begun to chant as though it were an ultimate means to all salvation, one thing that is keeping a lot of jobs from being created? Intellectual Properties. I.P.s prevent many many competitors form entering an occupied marketspace, and it also prevent the jobs those competitors would create. Even in the events where competitors can enter the market, there is more initial capital needed as the barrier to entry to the market, as it is raised by redundant research and lawsuits.

So what needs to happen? Resructuring of the current business model. The shift from I.P. focused profits to goods/service focused profits. How do can you compete if there it no I.P. system in place? Make higher quality products, cut costs that are actually wasteful (such as CEO salaries and bonuses), provide service people actually want enough to pay for. This also means you can free up billions of dollars of lawsuits and redundant research and wasted time.

What about Media? How can we convert media from I.P. based profit to service based profit? Comissioned Art = service. Music Concert = service. Video game Subscriptions = Service. Etc. But, wait are you actually saying I have to continually put in hours of work to make money, rather than rely on this convinent system of secured profits? Where dead men 20 years in their grave are making more profit EACH YEAR, than a guy busting his ass 80 hours a week for his entire life could ever hope to make? Yes, you would have to continually work for profits...just like everyone else...

Legally speaking, that isn't the case. Theft is defined as the removal of someonne else's goods or services without compensation - you on't actually remove anyone's goods or services, or prevent them from being compensated. That's the difference between pirating and walking out of a restaurant without paying, or going into a movie theater without paying: no one is actually deprived of limited resources without recompense, which is why there's a legal difference.

Copyright infringement in the case of game piracy is more about gaining the advantages of creation without paying for it: the idea is that you don't have the right to experience somethign without paying for it, even if you're not depriving someone else of recompense or that same experience.

Piracy is illegal and wrong, sure, but it's distinct from theft.

One time I illegally downloaded that shitty Madonna song where she raps about Starbucks lattes. I actually deleted it to get my 5 MegaBytes back. I wonder if they counted that as a lost sale of the whole shitty $20 album.

+1

Sadly, things are not going to change. People are just afraid of change.

Oh, things change all the time. The problem, here, is that giant media corporations are the ones who have driven the change in copyright law for the past half-century.

Mickey Mouse should have been in the public domain before I was born.

We should take it upon ourselves to re-imagine Steamboat Willy in every genre and medium imaginable, and bring the fight home to Disney. I got dibs on Cleveland Steamboat Willy.

Indeed.

It's funny to see someone argue with Kasz and trying to use his "lack of education" against him. Morally pious people really get my goat, kasz is a good guy, and an educated one and trying to call him out as a dumb thieving pirate is just stupid. I'm glad that dude got smacked with a ban hammer. Kasz pays the respect of arguing politely and intelligently, and even if you disagree, return that courtesy.

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.