i like that analogy.

No working person who produces a good or service should have to adjust to poor and cheap individual, like yourself, who refuses to compensate them for their efforts.  If you can't afford it, then don't go there.  Individuals like yourself are why legitimate customers have to put up with the annoyance of copy protection.  You have pretty much said if you couldn't take a crowbar and unbolt it, you would not be trying to follow the hobby.  How about you have enough self-control you get a life and get out NOW?  But, of course you can't.  You want to leech off the efforts of others, and not compensate them at all.  And you can rationalize about the distribution channels being indirect and thus the developers won't get paid anyhow.  But, I doubt you will say that.  One wouldn't even expect you to

If you followed your principles also, you should either neither dine out, and be waited on, or if you do go out, NEVER tip the wait staff.  They are paid below minimum wage.  Why should you tip them for their efforts to take your order and bring them food?  Tipping is the old way of the industry.  Also, when you do go out, make sure you calculate exactly what the costs for the food was, minus labor, and only pay the place for the costs of the food before it is cooked.  If you are generous, you pay them for the wear and tear being there and also for the utility expenses.

The RIAA asks you not to download this song, by the way:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz-grdpKVqg

Weird Al didn't want embedding, so I will honor his request on how to handle his intellectual property.

So, I have a question...

When you buy second-hand CD's, who gets the money? Not the RIAA, much less the Musician (who hardly makes any money anyway). The store gets all the money.

When you buy used books, does the author make money? No. The store keeps all the profits and uses them to buy more stuff to sell.

When you buy used games, does the developer get money? No. The store keeps all of the profits.

When you buy used movies, do the filmmakers get money? No. The store keeps all of the profits.

All of the money goes back to the store, who invests the money however they see fit.

So who are you ripping off? GameStop (and other such stores). Wait, doesn't GameStop rip off everyone it buys used games off of? Yes. So really, when you pirate games instead of buying used (I'm sure that's an option people consider first), then you're just ripping off GameStop.

When you sell your used items to the stores, do they really give you an adequate amount of money? No, they give you 1/10th of what they sell it for. If you could sell your game to another person directly for the same price, you would both win by cutting out the middle man.

This isn't possible though, because if an individual tried to compete with a franchise, they would always lose. In the same effect, in order for a game to be pirated, someone has to buy it, just like in order to have a used game, someone has to have bought it.

You could try eBay, ect. but at that point there are problems like these:
1.eBay gets profits like GameStop.
2.The buyer has to pay shipping.
3.The person who buys it used always takes a risk in it being broken or malfunctioned.
4.You have to wait a long time, or pay a higher shipping fee.
5.You're just giving some of your money back to the person who will use that money for whatever purpose they see fit.

Before everybody jumps on my nuts, I'm not a major game pirate.

I admit to pirating a couple of things (Mailny games that have been published around 5 times, games that are hard to find and buy, games that aren't brought overseas, and games I've already bought before). If you buy half of your games at full new price, and pirated half of them (I don't do this, but whatever), then you would be giving more money to the developer than the guy who buys 90% of his games used.

So no, I don't feel guilty for ripping off GameStop every once & a while. I wouldn't have a problem with ever pirating again (in terms of games), if digital distribution cut the price in half, but it won't. In a perfect world, no-one would pirate, and the prices would drop (in terms of games once again). But this isn't a perfect world. People are paid very little for no reason sometimes, and people like Steve Jobs get rich off of selling other people's music off and retaining bigger profits than the artists who come up with the music. Everyone is trying to leech off each other, and I think it's always gonna be that way.

That's obviously not true. When I steal a TV (not that I would), I'm stealing actual materials which cost money... the store will have to replace that TV by buying another one from their supplier, at a cost. This is true no matter whether I had the intention of buying it or not.

When I make a copy of a game, I may be taking revenue away from the retailer or not... it depends on whether I would buy it otherwise. The retailer doesn't incur any cost when I download the game, since I'm not taking it from them.

Can't you see the difference? Pure economics and logic here...

I don't understand how anyone thinks that downloading a game and/or movie that you had zero intention of ever buying in the first place is stealing money from someone. If I didn't download it I wouldn't ever play it. They would make the same amount of money from me in either situation.

Now let us say I had zero intention of buying a game and then pirated it and enjoyed it, then went on to spread good word about it. Could me pirating a game I would have never bought end up making them money?

I wonder.

Just thinking out loud.

Ebay and gamestop deserve their profits they make on used games. Its silly to think that the publisher is entitled to any money after the first copy. Should Honda make money when ever some guy sells his 98 Civic?

Personally, i'd much rather invest in my local gamestore. At least by helping them raise there numbers, my money has a more local effect than increasing the profits of some huge company that doesnt care if I live or die. No, I'd rather increase the numbers of the game adviser working at the store, maybe they will get promoted or acknowledged in some way, and that will be far better imo than making EA's quarterly profit go up a small percent.

I hate to tell you, but GameStop and eBay ARE giant corporations who don't care whether you live or die. GameStop's HQ is probably about 30 minutes from where I live (around Dallas), and all any major corporation really cares about is making money or making an imprint on society/making a name for themselves (usu. less of the latter). If you think about it, GS and eBay are stealing profits away from developers, so who is the villian in all of this? So the guy who figures out how to build his own '98 civic out of air by looking at his friend's with some magical device (similar to a PC), should they get money for that? I know it's not possible, but that's because physical analogies are incomparable and useless, but that's basically what the anti-piracy stuff is saying...

However, you and many others are missing the point and creating a chicken before the egg situation.

You can't copy what wasn't created.

If the industry didn't exist to create the original game or Ferrari, you would have nothing new to create. In order for your system to makes sense there would have to be some form of desire to create new items, to later be copied.

However, why would anyone spend years creating a new game, if they knew they would receive zero compensation for their work? That is the system your creating. Which would be the downfall of all.

The Star Trek universal peace love harmony everyone working for common goal of expanding humanit is a farce that is unattainable, even with a pure replicate-anything machine.

Without the continuous flow of money through layers of compensation for work, everything will come crashing down. I personally really enjoy my gaming hobby and don't want to see it disappear.

On top of all of that no matter how you slice it, IT IS WRONG; LEGALLY, MORALLY, AND PLAIN OUT RUDE TO TAKE WHAT YOU DID NOT PAY FOR!

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I keep seeing that 3rd world country arguement. Stupid. Those areas have the highest rate of piracy. To overcome that loss, devs are forced to charge higher fees. Stop stealing software and prices would come down. Also, I bet those who have the capacity to not work and play games will have the funding to buy a game. Maybe not as many as they steal, but that's life. Deal with it.

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Used games are still good for the industry just as used cars are still good for auto makers. Ideally the devs would like everyone to buy a new copy everytime, however, that is not feasible. So, used copies still allow money to flow through the system. I sell my games when I finish them so I can buy new ones. As does Gamestop. The more used stuff they sale at high profits, the more they are willing to buy from a risky new IP. Finally, at least here you actually compensated someone for the original copy of the software.

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I don't understand how something as simple as this creates so much controversy. Even my children (3,5,& 6yrs) realize that if you take something you didn't pay for, its stealing. Its just not a complicated idea. It doesn't matter if it actually hurts or affects the person/entity you took it from; IT'S STEALING. It's like using the, "well I'm only borrowing it" logic. It doesn't matter, you don't have permission to just take it.

I would really support a massive increase on piracy laws. Heaftier fines, much larger jail terms, etc. I applaud when I see the ridiculas fines in millions of dollars for 20 songs stolen. Sure, its overboard, but when they settle for a smaller amount it still is far more than the content was originally worth and maybe someday it will happen to you. *please God, please....*

I buy a lot of pre-owned games because it is cheaper and because I exploit one of Gamestop's policies -- seven-day return policy. So if the game is terrible, I am not stuck with it.

And while some question the second-hand market, PCs have all but eliminated its second-hand market and seem to have more of a piracy issue than consoles. Coincidence?

Mike from Morgantown