Unfortunately, the ones making the games cannot be counted upon to accurately describe what specifications are required. Truths get stretched. This is why I emphasize the demo aspect. If more games had demos, the justifications for piracy would be fewer. Piracy itself, on the other hand...LordNue said:
An argument of this nature is a dangerous road to take. At the purest level you are indeed correct - if I steal your car I gain and you lose something tangible. When you steal intellictual property, in many cases you the only thing lost is the intangible idea of a reward. The trouble is, when you start splitting hairs like this your argument is seen, at best, as a flimsy rationalization designed to shield you from admitting to yourself that your theft of an album through some P2P network is somehow "less bad" than walking into a store and stealing the CD.ZerOmega said:
The trouble with this argument is that it displays a sense of entitlement that borders on contept for the rights of others. I do not have the money for a Porsche - does that mean I should just steal one? These consumer products do not represent some sort of inalienable right. In fact, the totality of rights you as a consumer actually have consists of the choice to purchase what is available for the lowest price you can negotiate. No artist owes you a copy of their work even if you're willing to pay for it, and no industry will accept as collateral your financial regrets in exchange for a product.ZerOmega said:
Given that all other forms of theft can be a jailable offense, why is stealing IP somehow different? If a person steals more than $500 USD worth of goods from a store, they have committed a felony and given that most of the IP people routinely steal has a well known cost, it seems easy enough to determine when a person has exceeded this value. When you consider that many people who pirate games, music and movies do so regularly, you'd find it pretty easy to brand most of them a felon inside of a few months of criminal activity. The only catch here is that in most cases, you are looking at a cost for a single instance of a crime when dealing with classical theft versus long term theft. If you combine this with the simple fact that intellictual property laws are convoluted enough that it makes it difficult to determine ownership, I suspect you'll find that only people who are in flagrant violation of the law are prosecuted.ZerOmega said:
No, EVERYBODY on earth has morals, but they may not share your personal take on things. Morality is, if you discard the specifics obviously, nothing more than the complex set of personal rules that a person uses when making decisions that do not require a logical thought process. They are, essentially, the benchmarks one uses when approaching any unknown situation where they are expected to make a decision.LordNue said:
Don't try to antagonize me. Just because I disagree with you does not make me a criminal. Besides, beating someone to dead and shooting someone to dead ARE two different kind of murders with a same kind of conclusion: the victim dies. Piratism and bulgary are two different kinds of theivery with two different kinds of conclusions: In the later one, the victim loses material possession and in the former one he/she doesn't.Eclectic Dreck said:
