Devour said:
Let's address what economists / consumers usually think of piracy:-
- [li]It's a natural part of consumer behaviour. It's a way to test the waters of a product. Attempting to shut it down doesn't do anything useful.[/li]
[li]The vast majority of people who have access to the internet have done an act of piracy on the internet (something like 90% of teens had over 700 illegally downloaded songs on their portable music players). Making piracy an arrestable crime under law would mean a lot of people would be criminalised for it. See American prohibition, which created organised crime.[/li]
[li]More anti-piracy stuff = Fewer sales and more piracy. See Spore as an example of serious DRM getting the game into a piracy whirlwind.[/li]
[li]Wares are generally of a better quality than the product itself.[/li]
[li]Consumers don't really consider it a crime, simply because it's not causing anyone any real harm.[/li]
Well this will require a significant response. The TLDR is "total utter bulls***". I'm in the progress of an Economics degree (2nd year, and now being invited to attend honours course information for future study as a high performing student), so take this information as someone who has studied but is not a 'master of the information'.
You say a lot in this post without providing any actual support. Rattling this information as fact doesn't add anything to your argument whatsoever, if anything, it gives great fuel to burn it down. Let's go from the start.
Let's address what economists / consumers usually think of piracy:-
Who? Give me any one economist who provides this information.
It's a natural part of consumer behaviour. It's a way to test the waters of a product. Attempting to shut it down doesn't do anything useful
A three step argument. A
natural part of consumer behaviour doesn't mean anything. Purchasing something is natural. So is consumption. There is a natural behaviour in humans to fight amongst ourselves, either in grand or small scales (wars for dominance). That doesn't necessarily make them desirable.
It's a way to test the waters of a product requires some kind of example or validation. It gives no explanation of how this might be the case. Are we to assume that an item more desirable will be stolen more frequently, hence this is how the waters are tested? To see how many people steal the good? You don't present a case, instead present a line that doesn't give any evidence.
Attempting to shut it down doesn't do anything useful. Well that can be proven false in economic terms.
A very brief rundown; feel free to google these terms, and wikipedia may give you a pretty rough source to get some ideas. We as humans behave under a generalised principle used in economics termed
homo economicus. We take actions that benefit ourselves (and by the same token, benefitting others that we may gain benefit from doing). The theft of a good produced by an action (such as stealing a game from a developer) decreases the good they receive, and reduces their supply.
The theft of the good causes them to invest into technologies such as DRM and other copyright protection. This increases the cost of the good, reducing demand and hence supply once more.
There is a deadweight loss from this action - the deadweight loss is the loss of benefit to the community by the consumption and production of the item. This is in direct cause of the theft of the good and the decreased willingness to produce and also consume the item with the associated costs (and losses) now involved. This deadweight loss means we all get less.
Developers hence are less likely to enter the field and create games when they know their product will cost more, be pirated, and be in less demand. The overall result is that we get less games made.
The vast majority of people who have access to the internet have done an act of piracy on the internet (something like 90% of teens had over 700 illegally downloaded songs on their portable music players). Making piracy an arrestable crime under law would mean a lot of people would be criminalised for it
I can say that you would likely believe slavery to be a crime. However it was widely accepted only a short time ago in human history. What people consider to be right or wrong is not ethically accurate - hence the defintion difference between morality and ethics. Everything after this statement can hence be proven wrong because popular opinion =/= truth.
More anti-piracy stuff = Fewer sales and more piracy. See Spore as an example of serious DRM getting the game into a piracy whirlwind
is true, because of the increased cost of the good, where developers need to account for theft so they may still make a profit, and also for the increased costs of installing copyright protection. This is however a result of consumer behaviour, and ironically should be blamed on the pirates, not the producers. Your argument is entirely opposite to what you aim for.
Wares are generally of a better quality than the product itself
. I've never really seen a cracked game that was better than the original. If anything the risk of viruses and trojans make a pirated game less useful, and the prospect of constant new cracks to break new updates make them more unwieldly and further less useful.
Consumers don't really consider it a crime, simply because it's not causing anyone any real harm
This can be literally proven wrong. And guess what, I just did. I could make some graphs for you too, but you can research it yourself into deadweight losses and supply/demand curves (a great example would be to consider a tax and view the changes made).
Pretty much your whole argument is absolutely positively and outrageously false.
