Now I'm prepared to contribute the royal hell out of this piracy discussion.
I'll keep my arguments localized to video games, because I am in no way informed about the nuances of the music industry.
Simply put, piracy is wrong. But I'll get to my arguments on
that in a second here.
Number one: piracy is not theft. A pirated copy does
not equal a lost sale. If someone were to come out with an absolutely unbeatable DRM scheme, and apply it to everything, sales would not skyrocket. And every pirated copy of Barbie Horse Adventures does not mean that a legitimate copy vanishes from store shelves. Piracy != theft. However, piracy is still wrong for much the same reasons.
All this data that makes up the game was made by somebody. The product that that person, or team of people has/have created has obviously interested you enough to get it. In a non-technology situation, the inventor makes the "Awesome-Tec 10,000+", offers it for 3.99, and the customer (that's you and me) has to decide whether or not the Awesome-Tec is worth that much. If not, we do without. In the non-digital situation, you choose to pay, or go without. Or steal, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that enough people consider
actual theft to be wrong that I don't need to go through the trouble of proving it.
Now, by pirating, you get the product, but the creator does not get their reward. The pirate may not agree that "ShooterGame3000" is worth what the (often absurd) companies are selling it for, but unlike those buying non-digital products, the medium makes piracy a very enticing offer, far more so than theft. There's also the issue of "piracy is not theft," that I arrived at earlier. None of that changes the fact that you get the product without giving the creator any credit. If I buy something like a car, then I'm not just making sure that the dealer who's gouging the prices gets to eat his caviar tonight, I'm expressing my thanks to the engineer who designed the car to be as fuel efficient as possible, to have eleventy-trillion cup holders, and made it look awesome. I'm showing appreciation for the product by purchasing it. If I didn't think that all the great little things that the engineer put into the car made it worth a concievable price, then I go without. By refusing to repay the design team who makes the game, but still play the game and enjoy it, then I am no better than someone who steals a car.
Now of course, the digital vs. tangible product differentiation also creates other problems, most of which turn into counterarguments. I'll examine some of those next.
1: "Information wants to be free!"
This argument makes me angry. No. A game, or song, or movie is not "information." It is a product. Somebody has created it for the purpose of making money to continue and enrich their lives. If you had pirated a set of encyclopedias, this might be a valid argument, as the ideas and information contained therein are not proprietary. But just because the product expresses itself as a sequence of zeroes and ones does not turn it into "information." Don't try to apply freedom-of-speech thinking to justify piracy of a product. You know, those things that people make so that they can get paid. You know, to eat.
2: "I just want to
try it. If I like it, then I'll go out and pay for it."
Number one, with any product, especially games, you can come up with a good reason that it's not worth what you paid.
This also provides an interesting counterpoint. I will, however give you that game demos need to be better. By the end of the demo, you should have a feel for gameplay, a sense of the story, and enough info to determine whether or not you should pay for it. Nonetheless, none of that justifies piracy.
3: "I don't have enough money."
And yet you continue to sit with a hobby that requires you to pay that money? Even if you do continue to game, there's way more out there than the expensive AAA games. There's the indy scene,
free flash games, hell there's even our own Dwarf Fortress for gods sake. If you've truly exhausted every bit of play from
that, then you have not added enough magma.
4: "The DRM! Oh, gods, the DRM!"
If you pirate to make a statement about DRM, then you are sadly a part of the problem. Yes, DRM sucks. It is the Bane of PC gaming, the epitome of gamer issues, and it is number one on the list of "Things that pissed me off today." Every. Single. Day. But by pirating it,
you are part of the problem! Let us not forget that DRM is at it's heart an anti-piracy measure. If you really want to make a statement about it, do without. Let the companies know that there are those who
will not use these measures, and that it is
those companies who will get your money. But by pirating the game, all you do is reaffirm their arguments. Those who use the pirated copy to get around obtrusive DRM measures are still effectively reaffirming the arguments in favor of those measures, even if it is unintentional.
5: "I can't find the game any other way."
If you have tried to find it in stores, used, traded in, on
legitimate online sources, and through ancient voodoo rituals, then you have a valid case. But if you give it a cursory try, you probably would have pirated anyways, and are making excuses. This same gray area a
Finally,
if I may inject someone elses commentary into this argument, as well as some interesting statistics.So there you go. Feel free to attack, savage, mutilate, and generally beat the crap out of my arguments as you wish. In fact, I look forward to it.
