I understand your point, and I understand the point of the thread/news, that the discussion of piracy and it's implications is complex. Like you said the example when you played around with expensive software as a kid, it not only could introduce you into computers and make it more likely to buy smilar software as an adult, but there's also this argument of education, you get passionate about comps, become self-trained and contribute to the economy buy being a productive individual thanks to that knowledge etc etc.

There are many arguments and factors, and obviously we need to get rid of this "1 pirated copy is 1 lost sale".

One comment on the green though. Do you really think that's ridiculous?

Do you know the game Mount & Blade? It's a niche strategy/RPG PC game developed by a small Turkish independent studio. Many people in forums and gametrailers flame the game for having weak graphics. It's pretty obvious it hasn't got top-notch grafix due to their limited resources.

I pirated the game. Many others did too. Now the sequel M&B Warband came out, with the same graphcis and you hear the same comments. Again it's due to limited resources.

I feel that we who pirated the game, by not contributing financially to something we enjoyed without asking permission, we as a collective removed something. We removed income to the developer and we removed quality from the sequel by denying it resources. Because a proportion of us would have paid for it if it wasn't so easy to pirate.

*Now I ended up buying the sequel because it demands a CD key for the multiplayer (the original didn't have any). But if I couldnt have pirated any of them I probably would have paid for both games and thus the dev would have gotten more money in their pockets.

But the gains are exactly that!  The gains is what is actually taken away from you. Thus it is theft.

So, it's stealing potential? Back to the car example. Would you be pissed if someone stole your car? Would you be pissed if someone would build a car like your on his own and you couldn't sell your car to that guy?

Look, saying that piracy is no different from stealing stuff is huge discredit to people who actually have lost their fortune because of theft.

I'll give a different analogy. As we have had our debates about religion; explain to me what's the difference between god, easterbunny, toothfairy and santa claus? All of them are imaginary, but still some people live how god tells them to. So to them, putting these on the same line is discrediting their religion.

You hit the nail on the head with this one.   I got experience with Photoshop / AutoCAD / etc as a younger kid and this has enabled me to have a broad knowledge of various products and actually be proficient with them.

For example,  I have a Lady Gaga song on my PC that was sent to me.  I never would have purchased it, thought of purchasing it, thought about purchasing it for a friend or family member prior to this being sent to me.   However, after listening to it a handful of times I find that I didn't detest it as much as I thought I would.   Now it's definitely an option to being purchased in the future.

That means you also think it's wrong to say:

"He stole my idea".

A guy invents something great. Someone else copies his files and is first to make a product/thesis/patent based on the files.

But no, it wasn't theft because the guy's files are still intact inside his house!

This is different again. The second guy took the rights for the actual product, which is stealing the actual product. We are talking about a case where the first guy has patents etc. for the product and the second guy makes the same product based on the patents to his own use.

However, the example i just used is bad, because it should be legal everywhere for you to build a patented product for your own use.

I'm pretty sure it is... well unless it's a digital product.

For the obvious reason that anybody can do it without having to put in the work it takes to make a regular product.

Digital infringement illegal because manufacturing and creation only takes the click of a button with little effort and need other then space on your computer.

The dyke gets the money because the other 3 are figments of your ****** imagination! XD I have to agree with Kasz and bdbdbd on this, piracy is not theft. 

@Slimebeast the sequel to the game you pirated, we could also argue that had you not pirated the first game you would have not bought the second at all. Would you have willingly paid for that game not knowing what your experience would be?

No you misunderstood. What if the first guy didn't have any rights as in a patent? He hadn't registered or presented it for anyone yet. It could be a building plan, scientific research, a music song, anything.

Then someone came and copied all the guys' work and made it into money and fame for himself. But by your logic it wasn't theft because nothing was actually removed.

That's a good point. Of course there's some benefit in the other direction too. The Microsoft argument. "Let them pirate Windows, they get accustomed to our products and eventually they'll buy something from us (or recommend it to others who in turn tend to purchase, etc)".

In my case, in the M&B case I'm not entirely sure but I believe I would have bought both games if I couldnt pirate neither.

I know for sure though that I am a huge pirate on PC even though it's my main platform, while I buy relatively more for X360 since my console ain't modded. And on average I save lots of money from pirating stuff.