One reason people dislike Piracy is that paying 60+ for a game seems quite foolish when a Pirate can play it for free. Why pay when you don't have to? Morals? Ethics? These won't be strong deterrents for most people. A strange situation, no doubt.

I don't understand the argument against used games. I want the option to sell my games, whether to a retailer or another person.

Actual, they are strong deterants for most people.  As is the fact that people are designed to WANT to pay a fair price for a product.

Of course my chart showed a decline in revenue. The very DEFINITION of a market collapse IS a sharp decline in revenue.

If CD prices were declining, it was because piracy undermined their existing market value - and therefore piracy damaged their market value.

If piracy was not a factor in the collapse of the music industry, then explain why the market collapse began at the moment napster was introduced?

Piracy was at the core of the market collapse. Piracy did a great deal of harm to the music industry.

That'd be a pretty hard thing to explain, since that didn't happen. 

The market spiked to it's highest levels after Napster was introduced in 1999... then later fell.

If you look at your chart you'd notice CD sales don't fall untill after Napster shut down.

What did fall off, is what had been falling off.... Cassette sales.  Your saying Piracy killed off cassett tapes.

Just like in.... 1994... where revenue was on a huge downfall as CD sales weren't building up fast enough to make up for cassette loses.

That is until that slide stopped around 1996-1997 when CD's suddenly got a lot more popular....

Now what happened in 1996-1997?

That would be popularization of the MP3, and ripping of Discs.  Huh.

So, for some more accurate questions

Why did CD sales suddenly get bigger once Mp3's became popular?   CD sales being fairly stagnant before.

Why did CD sales, reach new heights during Napsters initial release?

Why did CD sales seem to not drop dramitcally until Itunes became popular?

The true developers' banes are the Maya. They sent their dark archbishop Ballmer to buzz in their ears "Developers Developers Developers Developers..." and since then they totally lost concentration and can only develop crap.

Actually, I don't see CD sales starting to fall only after Napster shut down in July 2001. What I see is CD sales falling as Napster starts to gain millions of users in 2000; and a sharp decline during 2001 when the Napster userbase peaked. Napster was introduced in 1999, but it didn't have many users until after that as this chart describes:

Also, music piracy did not end with Napster, there were increasing numbers of other programs that came out during and afterwards. Gnutella launched in 2000, Kazaa and Bit Torrent in 2001, etc...

"Now what happened in 1996-1997?"

"That would be popularization of the MP3, and ripping of Discs.  Huh."

This is another example of how piracy in a segment market, caused that segment to stop purchasing music, and therefore negatively impacted the industry. When more widely accessible methods of piracy came along with Napster, then a greater segment followed, and the market collapsed.

CDs were also not "fairly stagnant before", and the original chart I posted clearly shows the market was trending upwards from the 1980's until 2000 when piracy began to grow. The market continued to collapse as piracy grew, and you haven't disproven that.

It is a well established fact that piracy caused the collapse of the music industry. Piracy does majorly hurt sales whether you want to believe it does or not.

Piracy does in fact cause a lot of damage to the industry. The only reason people want to try and argue that it doesn't is so they can feel justified in taking shit for free.

Again.... you aren't looking at your own charts.  Napster peaked in... February?   Then closed in July.

Also, you totally missed the point.  MP3 ripping INCREASED CD sales. look at your charts again.

Up until that CD sales stayed roughly the same... for a few years, and revenue declined due to cassette loses. 

In 94 it was ~50, in 95 it was roughly  ~50, in 96 it was ~50.  In 97, it was ~53.   It spiked from there.

Essentially I would ask you to reevaluate your own data, as you clearly must not be that familiar with it... looking at the data after forming your opinion, rather then looking for data before forming an opinion.

Used games is still a game sold. Piracy is zero...

That's actually a great difference. Once someone starts pirating he may never buy a single new game. So yeah, pirating got my vote.

The report states that around a third of Swiss citizens over 15 years old download pirated music, movies and games from the Internet. However, these people don’t spend less money as a result because the budgets they reserve for entertainment are fairly constant. This means that downloading is mostly complementary.

The other side of piracy, based on the Dutch study, is that downloaders are reported to be more frequent visitors to concerts, and game downloaders actually bought more games than those who didn’t. And in the music industry, lesser-know bands profit most from the sampling effect of file-sharing.

The Swiss report then goes on to review several of the repressive anti-piracy laws and regulations that have been implemented in other countries recently, such as the three-strikes Hadopi law in France. According to the report 12 million was spent on Hadopi in France this year, a figure the Swiss deem too high.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/12/05/swiss-government-study-finds-internet-downloads-increase-sales/

So pirates spend the same amount on on content, and in fact buy more games than non pirats. People who buy used on the other hand spend less on new games because it eats into their budget for entertainment....

It's slightly balanced out by the people buying new getting money to buy more new games. The problem is with stores like gamestop the amount the person selling the game gets is far smaller than what the store sells the game for.

Interesting indeed.

That is Switzerland though ;)