No crime can be completely stopped.  For example stopping a break in.  You lock the door to your house and all of your windows.  How hard is it to forcibly enter your house?  I'd venture to say that the locks are a strong enough deterent for most.  But an individual skilled at breaking in would likely have no problems finding an appropriate way/measure to get in and take what they want. 

Just because you can't stop all crime doesn't mean you shouldn't try to stop crime.  It's a cost benefit analysis.  A college student would be fine relying on the locks on his door, windows because he doesn't have that many items to lose.  A millionaire would likely have a security fence, cameras, security guard, and a home security system.  It certainly costs more to have all these items but the risk of loss is much higher so they are willing to pay more to protect it.  So in regards to piracy, a company may spend $200,000 searching the web stopping websites that illegally distribute and use severs for their games.  If they sell another 10,000 copies of their game it may be worth it. 

At the end of the day it most certainly does cause economic problems.  Companies pay alot of money to stop piracy of their products.  The most pirated industry is the music industry.  http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/18/technology/music.php  They are still seeing declines in revenue and profits from the illegal MP3 sites.  Initially what happened is college students were going crazy downloading songs.  So revenue from CDs continued to stay constant and even increase as is typical in a growing market.  But the problem is demand and use increased greatly while revenue/profits increased slightly.  Then as college consumers gained excess income they never joined the market of paying for their downloads.  They were used to getting thousands of songs a year for free and they could not justify spending hundreds or thousands of dollars a year for what they were already getting.  So the market started to decline.  As college kids joined the workforce and developed networks they spread their songs and information to millions of other people that would not have found out about free music on their own and they started downloading.  So just because the music industry did not show initial signs of issues does not mean their isn't a cost.  30 billion illegal downloads?  40% of teenagers not paying for music?  The music industry has tough times coming if they can't find a way to curb piracy.

There is one added benefit to piracy.  If the user was not going to purchase your product but used the download as a trial period, then decided purchase the product from you.  The problem is that once you rationalize getting things illegally as a try out period, you'll likely end up rationalizing not paying for the product because your market value is less than the actual price of the product.  It's a self defeating benefit over time.  So while the cost of piracy may be overblown, you are clearly overblowing the benefits of piracy.

Exactly my point in the prior thread.  Piracy leads to rationalization that games aren't worth what is paid for them.  The market, not you, decides the prices of games.  If the market thinks that Crysis should be in the bargain bin for $10 or $20 it'll get there.  In fact most games eventually drop to those prices anyways if they've been on the market long enough.  So if you don't think it's worth $50 wait until it hits the price you think it's worth.  It's not a right to be able to play every game you want and just pay for the ones you like.  That's the biggest problem with the whole "the people that download wouldn't have paid for the game" argument.  It's not a right for those individuals to play the game.  It does no good for a company to have millions of people playing their games if they can't profit from it.  We all buy stinkers sometimes, and sometimes we get games that give us 100 hrs of enjoyment for $20.  Do you send the company a check for extra money if the game performs better than your expectations and you would have paid $80 for it?  The company can't be the only one taking the risks.  

i allways buy games, i never have pirated a game and never will

That's a load of nonsense.

By using common sense, anyone can clearly see that the effects of P2P on the music industry are barely discernible from zero. Every single independent study on the matter thus far has also arrived at a similar conclusion.

The industry had its highest sales when Napster was at its peak in year 2000, when everyone was going platinum.

Their sales began to decline thereafter because people got tired of paying $20 for a CD with two or three good songs and ten filler tracks. In short, their sales declined because their product sucked and their business model sucked. It also didn't help that they started condemning their fanbase as "thieves" and "pirates", and it really didn't help when they started with the legal threats.

People turned to P2P not because they were thieving ingrates who wanted to get everything for free, but because the industry wouldn't give them what they wanted, so they found a way to get it, even if it meant that they weren't paying for it.

If P2P were such a threat, then Itunes should have tanked a long time ago, because who would pay to download music that's already available for free?

Piracy is not stealing.
Piracy is copying.

Copyright laws suck. As long as you pay to copyright your material, you get protection. It is just a simple form of bribery. You pay to copyright, so if someone copies, they beat him up.
And finally copyright laws are for exact copies. If something binary is copied and accidentally a bit is reversed, you have not copied it, even if the code has error protection.

Not exactly.  You could get a poorman's copyright where you gain protection without paying $.  And also, their is a grey area in between fair use and an exact copy.  Pretty sure switching a bit would be a large issue if the actual program ran almost identical. 

I have yet to find one article where a company is praising piracy for their profits.  But feel free to post some.  30 billion illegal downloads.  How many would have purchased the song?  I don't know.  You don't know either.  I know they lost money and I'm not really going to argue how much sense it is nearly impossible to prove.  I guess I could just call your explanation nonsense, act superior, and move on?  No, that would be too easy.

Entertainment for the most part has experienced large growth from the 90's.  You do know Napster shortly went legit (i.e. paid downloads) after 2000 and their are several other free websites out there?  Comparing one web site to an industry isn't the best comparison.  You act like growth in an industry is proof that piracy does not affect it.  And Napster went down the tube due to the lawsuit.  It's not a pirate tool anymore. 

True to an extent.  Their business model could have been better.  But they didn't call their fanbase "thieves" and "pirates".  That's what they called the pirates.  And their message was clear, buy our music.  CD's were expensive but they now have a downloadable music model which is much better for the consumer and revenues are still going down.  But hey all music should be free right?

I think this is the exact defination of stealing.

[quote]If P2P were such a threat, then Itunes should have tanked a long time ago, because who would pay to download music that's already available for free?[\quote]

Maybe because some people are ethical?  I've been away from the illegal downloads of music for quite some time, but I know you can download any song for free.  You just have to find it.  So why does the music industry exist?

 Your comment about it being only in American is inexact.

Software piracy is punishable of up to 5 years in Jail and up to 250 000$ in fine in USA.

In UK it's only a 5 000 pounds fine but up to 10 years in Jail

In France it's a fine of up to 300 000 Euros and up to 3 years in Jail..

People that says piracy has no cost are really blind.

Do you think the people currently working to fight it or busy trying to implement DRM instead of working on more game features are working for free ?


Botttom line is you will always find a lot of people advocating piracy isn't wrong because they do it and won't admit to do something wrong...