Lord_Jaroh said:
Barring the questionable legality of any acton, what is the difference between: borrowing a game from a friend, borrowing a game from a library, copying a game that your friend copied onto his ftp server, grabbing a copy of a torrent file of a game?
*snip*
There was a time when women couldn't vote, when Black people weren't free men, when it was wrong to speak up against the church, when it was wrong to want a different future than your father. These were all laws at one point, because they "seemed right at the time". Those laws changed, as times changed, as technology changed, as people's thoughts of what is right or wrong changed. Copyright laws are outdated and wrong. They need to be changed as well.
A nice spiel, but it's ultimately saying "Hey, it's OK to pirate ANYTHING, because The Copyright laws are unfair." since you just equated every form of lending to piracy. With that precedent in place, only an idiot would pay for, well, ANYTHING DIGITAL or equally easily replicated.
The reason software piracy is an entirely different beast is simple:
All tangible products take real effort, time and/or money to replicate. By the time you can replicate something, chances are, you're already skilled enough to make your own original, functional product (as long as you don't violate a patent, which is similar to a copyright, but more limited in span).
If I wanted to copy a particular model of say, a toaster (like your beloved chair), it would take considerable time, effort, and material to do so. Ultimately, it would probably benefit me most to just buy the damn toaster unless I really wanted to learn the procedure in the process.
You memorizing the book takes effort (serious effort), so there is still a real incentive to buy/rent the book for your family as it would save you considerable time.
Loaning/lending games/titles is in a fuzzy area because it can either act as a form of piracy in principle, or it can guarantee another sale (in the case of multiplayer games).
The logic of this example can be extended to ANY GIVEN TANGIBLE PRODUCT.
Art...is also not set in stone since there is something to be said about the quality of the reproduction of the piece. A laser printer copy might look nice, but it probably wouldn't compare to the original. Most world-famous art, however, is routinely repainted as practice for aspiring artists and usually given public license for reproduction.
It's ultimately up to the work's owner whether they want to charge for a copy or not.
Software piracy in comparison to all of that is childishly simple to commit, and thus, a new problem arose for a new age. Learning the programming, graphics, sound, and game design, then dedicating the thousands upon thousands of work-hours to create even a mediocre game simply pales in comparison to how easy it is to replicate the published end result (and when said end result is otherwise indistinguishable from the original).
The risk is minimal, the cost is as close to zero as it gets, but the payoff is potentially excellent.
Now, I do agree that Copyright laws are indeed outdated, but I must ask for an alternative; one that doesn't all but legalize every single piece of software as freeware and therefore kill the entire market.
It's clear that the current laws are abused (check out the record label companies. They regularly screw over their clients in unspeakable ways. How would you like someone taking 90% of all the profits on a piece of work they barely had a hand in making?)
We've already seen the futility of DRM, and the inept global legal system try to scare hackers and pirate sources into compliance. So it's not as though the problem can be curbed at the source without creating entirely new, and worse problems than before.
Right now, we're counting on people regularly (and blindly, given the increasingly self-destructive nature of some DRM) buying these titles to sustain the market.
Given your logic and justification, they would only buy these titles because they are not aware of the alternative.
How pathetic is it that we have to rely on gross consumer ignorance to sustain the gaming market?
If I am to believe the statistics (and knowing what I know about human nature, those statistics are likely true), most pirates are not going to act ethically. Over 3 out of 4 of them won't contribute to paying for the product.
At this time, there's no real solution short of people to just willingly stop pirating, and you can imagine how effective THAT will be. I suppose it's pointless to even argue it. If you're already pirating, nothing short of getting exceedingly unlucky and being arrested will stop you. Random nobodies on the internet certainly won't.
So unless the next response is exceedingly intelligent and rational, this conversation is done because I'm tired of trying to futility argue ethics and economics to people who don't want to listen.
I should check my work more often.
