only pirating is immoral. The others are not, not even slightly. Its not that good for the dev, but its reality. Like said before, after you buy a product you can do with it what you want. I can sell my tv and my xbox360 secondhand as well. And i probably will some day, unless it breaks down. I do the same for movies and music. I absolutely see no reason not to do so, its my right.

Offcourse it is de right of a developer to think of ways to prevent that. They are doing that by increasing its value by adding good multiplayer or dlc. Both great ways to extend the life of a game. They can also make the whole game a download, im not too fond of that idea since you dont see any money back. But Im not against it, if you dont want to download a product, then you shouldn't. I would only download a game if it saves me money. For example 40 bucks for the download while the retail price is 60 bucks.

1. Same with pirates. It took a week and a half to crack BioShock. Some Steam games take jsut as long. As such, maybe the pirate wants to buy it day one and not wait a week to get the game cracked. It also takes about a week for the fast people to finish their games and sell them used, so I don't see how this is even a valid argument at all.

2. Ok now you are just being stupid.

If A is a subset of B, and B has the property c, then property c also applies to A. You stated it yourself, game piates are also music pirates, but music pirates don't have to be game pirates. I agree on that. However studies have shown that Music Piates buy more albums than people who don't pirate. As such the game pirates are ALSO included in said study, meaning that on average they buy more digital software than people who DON'T pirate. Suggesting that piracy actually EXPANDS the market and helps it grow.

I suggestt you finish school befoe making any more arguments because they are jsut starting to sound desperate now. If you knew Set Theory 101 you wouldn't have made a fool of yourself there.

I have no idea why you guys are arguing about whether pirates expand or hurt the market. Pirating is immoral because it violates another person's right to property (intellectual). Re-selling/giving games isn't immoral because you aren't breaching the developer's right to intellectual property, and practicing your own right to property.

Even if pirating helps the gaming industry, they're still violating the rights of other human beings.

So pirating is immoral, because it is illegal? Even if it benefits gaming, and generally the greater picture, it should be forbidden simply because it violates current IP laws?

I guess you would also say that it was immoral to help the Jews escape from the orders of the legally ruling Nazi party. 

(And yes, I totally invoked Godwin's Law, after 235 posts this was inevitable.)

Yes you are. The person you sold the game to did not not pay the developer for his intellectual property. YOU got paid for the developer's intellectual property. You violate the intellectual property rights of the person who's intellectual property it actually is. The dis is your property, but the game still isn't, it's the intellectual property of the developer, who sees no money. You are basically stealing his income.

Also that's the worst argument I have ever seen. It helps the industry by makingn it more money but it's still bad!

What are you talking about? People who know pirates know that they are causing increasing influence for more pirates to be created in the PC and console world. I have to even admit at one time after seeing a friends pirated collection from having a modded system, I wanted to do the same. I knew it was wrong though and bought the games either new or used. It is as simple as that. Lets just say a pirate influenced someone who was willing to pay full price. That person is purchasing out of a minority of people when the pirating population is only growing.

The reason I meant for the thread to not be about the legality of copying IP is because that isn't really about morality. In EU we have the pirate party that has a seat in the EU congress, which you should understand as "law evolves constantly and something illegal doesn't mean it's immoral, just not allowed by the majority of the people".
Heck it's legal to walk arround with guns in some states and illegal in others, does that mean it's immoral and becomes moral accross the border?

That's also why I like Onyx's post a lot, it takes an individual perspective which is I believe the proper way to view this matter.

Pirating is illegal. Not only are you harming a company's intellectual rights, but also causing companies to want to license products to people in digital form instead of hard format. Not only are they coming after the likes of Gamestop, but they are coming after the fans as well. This can be seen very well with digital games on consoles and the PSP Go. You don't own digitally formated games. You only have the right to play them. All the rest of the rights belong to the creator and publisher. Piracy doesn't create interest into anything but pirating. It became a modern craze with Napster and practically demolished the recold sales of the music industry and now it is coming for gaming. Piracy benefits only those who want to game for free, not the industry because it doesn't stimulate it in anyway and makes you a target for the government. Pirated games are not the official versions of a game because they've been recreated (Which is illegal in every media form and you see it before movie credits) in a file format (like MP3) and shared like wildfire. This is the major reason NPD refuses to record PC sales.

The illegality of piracy is law because the government has taken a stand to help corporations in their fight to stop IP's being copied. The EU is more open minded than America where I am from. The problem is a pirate never had rights. They don't deserve any. They are just theives who steal for their own causes. They might have valid arguments about where this industry is going (and I can agree there), but it's not like they didn't influence the rushing of digitally distributed games. As I said, because of people like that devs and publishers will take it out on gamers who pay and second hand stores alike. There is no excuse and it is illegal for a reason. There is a fine for copying media companies IP, thats why they got copyrights. Basically, so you respect their work and don't copy it. Do you actually think developers give a damn about people who steal their titles and actually have the balls to say the have the right to do it? In America we have the right to protect our personal property (home). So trust me, if someone stole something I created, I would be on their lawn with a bat protecting my rights. Either that or I'd call the cops if I wanted to watch a fucking funny show.

You can steal Ferari, but you can`t copy Ferari.
You can copy digital game, but you can`t steal digital game.

Piracy is bad thing.
But without piracy many people wouldn`t be able to play so many game, that they were able thanks to piracy.

Also, do developers will feel better, if i won`t play their game. If i don`t have money to get that game, i will probably never play that game.
On the other hand, i can copy that game and play it.
In both cases, developers won`t get my money. But does it really hurts them, if i will play their product, rather than won`t?