How much money will Nintendo see when I go buy me a used Zelda game? Meanwhile, does someone else make money off of that sale?

How much money will Nintendo see if I pirate a Zelda game? Meanwhile does someone else make money off of that piracy?

Now tally that up, and tell me what's worse.

With used games, for every copy that is played, Nintendo saw money.  If a game is sold used, and sold again, and sold again, Nintendo only sees its money once, though.  But for practical purposes, the game will probably not change hands many times, because only one person at a time can play it and the game will become old. 

With pirated games, for every copy that is played, Nintendo saw no money.  A game can be pirated again and again limitlessly, and Nintendo will never see any money.  For practical purposes, any number of people can pirate the same game and play it simultaneously, soon after it comes out. 

And sometimes pirated games are sold for money, or you have to go through popups which technically might profit someone, or you pirate on a filesharing service you're paying for, so in cases like that piracy would be making money, not necessarily for the pirates though.

With used games, the original owner "makes" money, which is to say they recoup some of the money they spent buying it in the first place.  (Unlike piracy, where they can make copies and sell for profit.)  Businesses like GameStop, however, most definitely make money. 

THat's all nice and good however not nearly every pirated copy is a lost sale. Meanwhile when someone takes the time to get their ass to the store and then proceed to pay a significant percentage pf the original's cost, that's a much higher chance of a last sale.

Furthermore, considering that the pirate bay is the most famous tracker out there and they are not exactly making money off of people having to click on ads before being allowed to get a torrent. Meanwhile jsut about every used copy from Gamestop earns them a decent amount of money.

So ... what point are you trying to make here?  Are you arguing what's good/bad for the industry, or what's right/wrong morally? 

Especially:  What is your point regarding your (apparent) position that pirates don't make money? 

Studies have shown that piracy isn't bad for th gaming industry, and I am fairly confident in saying that the same is true for the used games market. My point is that used games are slightly less moral than piracy. If piracy is immoral, then the used market is even more immoral. If the used games are moral, then the same is true of piracy. However thinking that used games are moral and piracy is immoral is just laughable. That's from the point of view od the developer, which is all that matters really.

Hmm ... you are completely wrong.  The industry is something that can be argued, but the morals are ... well blatantly obvious to me. 

When you buy a new game, it's yours, just like if you bought a book or a car.  You read the book, play the game, drive the car.  You don't own the copyright but you own the fucking property.  The company got its money when it sold that property and from that moment it does not control what the new owner does with it, nor is there any moral reason it should have a say in what you do with it.  When you're tired of reading, playing, or driving you can sell your own property to someone else who wants to read, play, or drive it. 

It really annoys me when companies cripple their products to make it so you don't control the property -- or don't even purchase property at all, just a "license".  You're paying for permission to play the game, just like a long term rental.  Blockbuster is the past, not the future.

With piracy, no, it's not like stealing a car.  (Just to reassure you I don't hold to that idiocy.)  It's a little like, oh, counterfeiting.  But really it's its own thing.  There's just not any non-computer analogy for the ability to create endless copies of something almost for free and distribute them with the greatest of ease. 

Unlike with used games, or books, or cars, you are CREATING property.  It's not the same thing.  You are equating unequal paradigms. 

Also I am interested in how used games would be morally WORSE than piracy. 

You can't just CREATE the property. The property is the idea of the music/game/book etc. You don't buy a cd/book for the disc or the paper of the book. The value lies within the experience you had from the entertainment, whatever it was. As far as the creator is concerned you got the value of his property without him seeing money (which is also why it is dumb to compare it to physical goods). This is the case of both piracy and the use market. Why i say that the used market is a tiny bit worse, not much though, is because someone else makes money off of the creator's property, on top of the creator not seeing any compensation.

That is why, as far as the creator is concerned, both are basically the exact same, with one a tiny bit worse.

It's true that I didn't buy the StarCraft II computer game just for the box and the plastic coaster within.  But on the other hand, it's a long established practice, and one I fully support, that the physical product is a transferrable license to the content within, either on paper or on disk.  TRANSFERRABLE.  The concept of "ownership" to me implies the power over what is done from that point on with the product, which is why I hate non-resellable games.  Let me go into detail below. 

What I get from what you said is that your position is that there is only one actual "property" of StarCraft II, and every game out there is just a little piece of it, all tied together by ethereal strings and you're paying Blizzard to hand you a string so you can have access to Blizzard's property. 

I, on the other hand, think that (using books for an example) the book is the physical property, which is bought by the customer and owned by the customer, to do with as he pleases, and which contains a piece of the intellectual property, which is owned by the author/publisher/whatever.  In this case the book (which you OWN) contains the string from the last example's metaphor (the strings being the IP, and which you DON'T own), but the property containing the string is completely in the control of the customer, and the author has no right to take that string out of the property which is not theirs, and no right to control what is done with that property, including reselling it to someone else who would then own that property and have access to that string. 

I admit that some publishers are treating their games as being the first type (your idea), to control what you can do with the string, because they say it's still theirs and you're just paying to hold it, and they have set it up so that you can't hand it to someone else.  I hate that.  I think that they shouldn't control the string anymore.  On a practical level, since publishers are capable of making their games fit your definition, that may mean your idea is factually more correct, and any control I have over the strings of my games is at the sufferance of publishers.  But morally, I'm sticking with my version. 

P.S.  So your position is that, morally, the hierarchy would be (bad to worse):  free pirated stuff --> used stuff --------------------> pirated stuff that people pay for ... right?

P.P.S.  So in that metaphor, piracy is creating counterfeit strings.  That's how it creates property.

So in that metaphor, piracy is creating counterfeit strings.  That's how it creates property.