Twilight_guy said:
No my argument is that this whole thing is silly since anything can be justified. I noted that murder can be justified in order to prove that if that can be justified then surly something as simple as piracy can be justified. However everyone who quoted me seem to think that my logic is that they are the same when I'm clearly that would;d make my argument in valid since it relies on them not being the same and murder being worse. I can see someone arguing that they are incomparable, but nobody who quoted me did, only assuming I was making a different argument then I was. Laos, at some level theft of intellectual property and physical property has to be comparable.
I understood your original post just fine - your execution (pardon the pun) was lacking. You later explicitly said "murder is seen as worse or more offensive then piracy". You were trying to equate them both (even under the guise of saying it's just as easy to justify piracy as it is to justify murder) and you failed with your argument. That's not my problem - I'm simply pointing that out to you.
I am tired of this idiotic cop-out that they are so dissimilar that one is perfectly justifiable. You stole something that a person posses, his ideas which he wishes to keep. A person has a right to control what they created. I don't give a shit if it means they aren't making money or you suffer, you can't just take what they control and do what you like with it. I don't care if they don't lose a physical item or arn't harmed, you stole something they have control over, the right to control their own product and determine what happens to it. It's not a victimless crime and its it doesn't make you blameless for making a copy You are taking the owner's right to determine the fate of his work by enforcing your own opinions of what should happen on it.
You're debating semantics, and you seem to think this is black and white, which it's not.
It's nigh-impossible to protect data distributed to a public audience, whereas it's much easier to protect physical assets through real-world deterrents. The industry, instead of innovating by making their games easily accessible, affordable and/or well-crafted, heap on draconian DRM that punishes legit customers just as much (if not moreso) than pirates, and they blame the fanbase and piracy when their game doesn't sell 2 million copies. Again, it can't be classified as outright "stealing", because the original source code still remains with the owner - the only thing you're doing is making a copy of a copy.
Not only that, but you made the amateur mistake of assuming that every unit of a product pirated automatically equates to a lost sale, which it doesn't. In fact, I can quote you plenty of legal studies that show that the only thing piracy affects is the user's redistribution of disposable income. The amount of money lost to piracy is far, far less than the MPAA/publishers tell you.
I'll give you an example. Eight years back, I started downloading episodes of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica series' first season. It was only airing on British television at that point, and it wouldn't air on American channels for another nine months.
I downloaded the entire first season, as it aired, and greatly enjoyed it. I told other people to watch it. Later, the show's creator came out and made a public statement telling people not to download it because it would hurt their bottom line.
What actually ended up happening when the show aired on the Sci-Fi Channel was the exact opposite. The show garnered the highest viewing figures for any Sci-Fi Channel series up to that point, fed completely by word of mouth. I ended up not only buying the first two seasons of the series at full price, but I bought the Complete Series after the show had ended.
That's $300+ dollars that I gave them for their product, and I had initially downloaded episodes to watch. I can sit here and quote examples of artists/developers being positively affected by piracy (McPixel, Lost (TV series), etc.), but I think you see my point.
Also, don't be an asshole. If don't think the person you're arguing to is listening then stop replying to them. Don't stroke your ego by posting about how superior your argument is and how the person must be stupid and full off fallacy. That an asshole thing to do. Even if you're right be nice.
Hey, you're the one getting all bent out of shape, not me. I learned to stop taking the insults of other people seriously years ago.
