MelasZepheos said:
To try and sum up in a less rambling manner, we don't need pirates for this, we don't need pirates for the industry in general, and the ends do not the justify using piracy to achieve them. Great works of art from every other medium have been lost to carelessness and malevolent intent and yet they continue to thrive so I don't see why preserving gaming is so necessary. If the choice was between no piracy, or losing huge chunks of gaming history, I'd take the loss of history to remove piracy.
That's a bit nihilistic, no matter what gems are lost forever, more will always be made. But wouldn't you be better off if you had all the gems of the past and the future available ?
Also no, without piracy most of those old games being resold by Gog and steam would not be so because there would be no demand for them in the first place. They'd have been forgotten and vanishing like those 90% of the first movies that were made.
The "piracy" here is not new, it's more of a fatality. The arts thrived despite this, maybe even because of it. One way or the other this isn't formally proven, but I disagree that it's unprovable, see the link in the rest of my post.
Sikachu said:
Protection of the legitimate expectation of profit is a perfectly reasonable and acceptable goal in a capitalist society. Without it, the incentive to produce is diminished and thus society at large is harmed.
Err, lol. I hope you come back to me after those 14 days. Discussing piracy on the escapist is really walking on a fine line (I hope I didn't overstep).
I DO NOT DEFEND PIRACY bootlegging is wrong, definitely
I am merely speaking theory.
Except when that protection takes the form of DRMs, a form of greed driven paranoia that keep publishers wasting considerable amounts for stupid useless bloatwares. It does have it's use against day one piracy, mostly from casual media consumers who don't think about these things as much as we do, but still. It starts getting seriously ridiculous when older medias keep being released with DRMs even when they actually are in the public domain.
Copyrights in general are made by and for publishers, not the makers themselves. In certain periods writers actually profitted from copyrightlessness. So They are not that monolithic unquestionable force of lawful good that so many believe them to be, though I can admit they may have their good sides.
I've seen you too think that expectation of profit beyond ten years is not reasonable for digital medias. Would copyright lenght being reduced from life + 70 years to 10 years from publishing have such an impact on incentives as to be harmful ? When they were reduced from literally forever to, originally, 14 years artistic creativity did not suffer.
Pirates often argue that they wouldn't have bought the game anyway, so this harm evaporates. For some of them, this is plainly a lie. For others it's true, but they have nevertheless availed themselves of a benefit which they in no way deserve, and as such fall into the category of 'unjust enrichment'. It's wrong, but it can't be said to cost the games company anything - they produced the game already and had no cost in purveying it to the pirate - no cost, just a failure to gain.
Not all piracy is 'Wrong', I challenge you on that.
Exploiting a failure to gain is not wrong, indeed not letting culture be restricted by availability is hardly wrong. I have explored the issue of the impact of piracy quite deeply in other discussions. I have come to the conclusion that due to the unpredictable nature of digital media distribution those studies that could definitely answer that much debated question would have to be done without control groups. It actually is possible:
http://www.nccmt.ca/pubs/non-RCT2_EN.pdf
If after reading that article you have some inspiration on how it could be done, you're welcome to share them with me.
Is it unjust enrichment even if you could not pay for it and it is not available to you (or even if you could as the case may be)? That's an interesting question. I know no defence of piracy could hold in a tribunal because of the law, but even if it's just for old semi-forgotten games if you download them you have to see the law with a certain amount of philosophy.
Still, for the heck of it, lets determinate the liability:
1. Was the defendant enriched?
Yes.
2. Was the enrichment at the expense of the claimant?
No, or not provable (for now).
3. Was the enrichment unjust?
Only if the claimant is poorer than before as a result, not provable (for now). Failure to profit is not the responsibility of the defendant.
4. Does the defendant have a defense?
Yes, freedom of information, also claiming some laws are clearly outdated and proving it could be worth a try.
5. What remedies are available to the claimant?
On screen advertising for streamed medias, being popular among the clients and using that popularity for merchandising are two examples proven to work.
Law aside that isn't such a strong claim against piracy. There was an enrichment but no provable impoverishment, or the connection between the two is uncertain (one can argue DRMs are a consequence of piracy, but the cost of DRMs are more of a deliberate measure that does not automatically follows).
There is justification for the enrichment, the principle of a free culture actually does not nullify the expectation of profit. The justification for the impoverishment is at least equally uncertain. Untill a study can be put in place...
The law provides plenty of remedy against piracy, in theory for the most part. That it is grossly ineffective is not an argument against it's validity but that is not my only argument.
