Forgot to mention the "pirating is ruining the videogame industry" argument.

The reality is - videogame industry is ruining the videogame industry. Why?
In the search of ungodly amount of profits, large publishers often don't want to invest into high quality projects that are geared to the niche markets because those games aren't going to amount them large profit. This situation not only fills the market with lower quality(but mainstream orientated) games, but sometimes even closes entire gamers and critic-acclaimed developers.

Best example - Okami/Clover.
Okami, regarding to critics, is probably among the top 5% of all the console games to date. I'm playing it myself, got 40 hrs into the game, and IMHO it's the best console game i've ever played. The game is a masterpiece in it's field, and their makers, Clover studios, should be proud - wherever they currently work. Despite the obvious high quality of the game, Clover was shut down by Capcom. While i'm sure that Okami generated profit, it wasn't high enough to warrant Clover to live happily ever after producing high-quality titles.

IMO, the publisher greed for high profit is changing the gaming industry for worse. Developers are forced to make/make adjustments to games for general appeal of the market, so they can get bigger sales and survive the grim reaper of capitalism - innsufficent profit.

To illustrate this a bit further, we have the case of Sega becoming the savior of the Wii hardcore gamers. By publishing the Conduit and Madworld, they gained rep amongst the HC crowd, because both games are made by (small) devs which obviously love games and wanted to produce games which they theirselves would want to play, without big compromises.
Sega's rise in the eyes of the gamers just points out the situation on the market - while the move that sega made should be a rule, it has become a rarity.

This is such a broken record.

Did you obtain content you did not have consent to have or use?

Yes.

Then its theft.

Legal groups may have labeled it something else, which is still illegal. But, either way its still theft.

Taking money from your business is called embezzlement. But, that doesn't mean it isn't theft. Theft is the general term to describing taking something that isn't yours.

^ I think you're the broken record. We come up with multiple effective arguments, and you just keep repeating yourself like a parrot, with one single, flawed argument.

Rape is theft! And so is peeking into locker rooms.

Stop twisting definitions to suit your opinions...

So, I guess I have to ask, is piracy okay because it's not theft? I'm not sure if that's what the pro-pirate crowd is saying. I guess if you don't believe in people's property being theirs then there's no real point in having this discussion.

For the record, I don't think there is a point to this, the people who are for pirating have constructed some very convincing arguments, I can only assume out of necessity because otherwise they would have to admit that they are common criminals, and very few people are okay with that label. The human mind has unlimited powers of rationalization. In war we convince ourselves that the other people are terrible, or not even human, because killing another person is wrong, especially if they are good people. Therefore they can't be good or people. The cheating housewife convinces herself that boning the poolboy is okay because her husband has neglected her and it's his fault, or she "has needs". These people believe these ideas to their very souls because otherwise it would be impossible to live with themselves.

We can build up a world in our mind that conforms to every idea we have, and even pull ideas from the real world as supporting evidence, to write off anything we've ever done. That is the power of the human mind.

Yes, you are stealing. You are taking something that doesn't belong to you and you haven't used the accepted method for obtaining permission to use it (currency at the moment). You are harming others. I am not innocent of this, but I try very hard to not do it intentionally. Heck I've committed other crimes too, that are much more straightforward and tangible, but I don't flaunt them.

I am glad to see you are reasonable on some things. Hopefully this makes you more willing to listen to my other arguements.

We are having a semantics debate here. I see you keep trying to skirt that, but at the end of the day that is what started this discussion. You see piracy as theft. The problem is that no reasonable definition of theft can be applied. I do not understand why you find it hard to understand why people keep coming back to this point. You can't continuously assert your opinion and just expect the rest of the forum to give in. Words have set meaning for a reason. Copyright infringement is not theft just like murder is not theft of life. Rape is not theft of sex either. We define them differently because their economic and social impacts are extremely different.

You seem to think of everyone against you as a single group of horrible software pirates. The truth is I disagree with many of the people posting, and do not pirate current video games ever. I, on occasion, get an old game that is unavailable through any other purchasing means. You can continue to argue with everyone as if there was some united plot of video game pirates out to get you, but the fact is it will only make you look bad. You have not come up with anything resembling an intelligent argument so far, and I have to assume it is because you view all those against you as attempting to defend the act rather than challenge your use of words.

You are wrong: none of them is using that as a reason to continue pirating. They pirate because: lulz free stuff, no consecuences! Whatever they elaborate upon it it's just a face-saving facade. 

The problem is the governments actually enjoy the situation: instead of a bored mass of unemployed or underpaid people, there's now an entertained mass of unemployed or underpaid people which makes the whole thing more manageable.

I work on the "cultural industries" field and I could tell many stories about how "the average joe" is being hit and hard by this but hey nothing will convince people to say no to their free warez.

double post

You took the idea of battleship without consent.

Just admit it.  The only reason you see it as theft is because it's "easy"  you even say it yourself when you compare copying on a computer to a "Magic button."

It's not a magic button though.  It's called technology.

Tools are made to make things easier... your complaing about a magic button would be like Milton Bradley complaining that you have tools and didn't need to fashion everything to make the game from it's raw matierals.

Yeah, once again... I don't pirate.  Nor is piracy right.

However piracy isn't actually theft.  Which is... you know the point.

Murder isn't theft either.  Is murder right because it's not theft?

Heck, if i'm going to buy chips in a vending machine and I see my choice has a bag that didn't fall so if i buy it i'd get too... i don't get anything and look for the vending machine guy.