What exactly is the moral difference between pirating a game and borrowing one if you...

[rob_simple]

In what way is it dishonest? Do you even know what dishonest means? And how is it better to turn it in to the police, if we accept your premise that has them spending it on a night out? They haven't earned that particular ten dollars either.

In what way is keeping it honest? See, this is the problem with every single one of your arguments: they basically boil down to 'NO U' pissing matches; it's like talking to one of those kids who just reply, 'why?' to every single thing you say.

I'm growing tired of beating my head against this particular wall, so I'll end by, once again, re-iterating that I said pirating games, en masse, potentially results in lost sales.

You have continually attempted to discredit my points by resorting to semantics and shoving words in my mouth, when all I ever did was posit that, just maybe, it's possible that more sales are lost as a result of piracy than if no one ever pirated.

You don't have the "right" to do anything, so I'm not sure what your argument is. Rights are the accommodations afforded by the powerful to the less powerful; they do not exist in an abstract, real sense.

Ohhh...right, I get it now. Now I understand why all of this has been a complete waste of time.

Peace, I'm out.

 

[McKinsey]

You're right, I am totally making the assumption that, 'taking something without paying for it is wrong' is a universal truth. How foolish of me. I mean, it's not as if every country in the world has laws along those lines; this is definitely a fringe morality that I should have to justify, in detail.

Your mistake is that you keep using the word "take" while it is not at all applicable to the digital world. Digital products are not material objects, they are, essentially, just bunches of information for you to process. When you copy data, you don't physically TAKE anything, you LEARN something. So what you're saying is, it's immoral to get access to new information unless you pay someone, and I call bullshit on that one, bro.

 

[rob_simple]

You're right, I am totally making the assumption that, 'taking something without paying for it is wrong' is a universal truth. How foolish of me. I mean, it's not as if every country in the world has laws along those lines; this is definitely a fringe morality that I should have to justify, in detail.

Your mistake is that you keep using the word "take" while it is not at all applicable to the digital world. Digital products are not material objects, they are, essentially, just bunches of information for you to process. When you copy data, you don't physically TAKE anything, you LEARN something. So what you're saying is, it's immoral to get access to new information unless you pay someone, and I call bullshit on that one, bro.

Ah, here we go with the semantics again. Honest to God, what is it with pro-piracy advocates and trying to use wordplay to create logical loopholes that will justify their bullshit?

Digital products are still goods and services that cost money to create and make available, their physicality is not an issue. Furthermore, you don't learn a god damn thing playing games, you experience them.

Therefore, by your logic, I can walk into a cinema and watch a movie without paying. I'm not physically taking the film reel home with me, I'm just sitting in the cinema experiencing the film that everyone else there has paid good money to see.

Basically, broheim, what I'm saying is it's immoral to access content for free when other people are paying for it. I really don't get why this is such a difficult concept to grasp.

 

[McKinsey]

Therefore, by your logic, I can walk into a cinema and watch a movie without paying. I'm not physically taking the film reel home with me, I'm just sitting in the cinema experiencing the film that everyone else there has paid good money to see.

Yes, if your presence doesn't detract whatsoever from other people's enjoyment. Remember, you still occupy space and may reduce someone's field of vision if you're tall enough, you breathe air and fill the room with carbon dioxide, your body sheds smells and radiates heat, etc. But if you manage to become totally unnoticeable, then yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. You wouldn't have bought the ticket anyway, so no lost sale there.

Basically, broheim, what I'm saying is it's immoral to access content for free when other people are paying for it. I really don't get why this is such a difficult concept to grasp.

But it's only immoral in your mind, and moreover, this is jealosy speaking. Your whole logic is based on "Waaagh, why do they get to enjoy it for free and I don't?"

 

[rob_simple]

Therefore, by your logic, I can walk into a cinema and watch a movie without paying. I'm not physically taking the film reel home with me, I'm just sitting in the cinema experiencing the film that everyone else there has paid good money to see.

Yes, if your presence doesn't detract whatsoever from other people's enjoyment. Remember, you still occupy space and may reduce someone's field of vision if you're tall enough, you breathe air and fill the room with carbon dioxide, your body sheds smells and radiates heat, etc. But if you manage to become totally unnoticeable, then yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. You wouldn't have bought the ticket anyway, so no lost sale there.

Oh, you people do make me laugh. This 'it's not stealing if it's in cyberspace!!!' is like the last bastion of rationality for you lot; it's hilarious how every time I raise a point like this I get an itemised list of all the things my presence in the real world creates that my online influence does not.

One thing none of you ever consider is that piracy of gigantic files for things like games is one of the driving reasons behind the heavy bandwidth caps service providers place on their customers. So much for, 'it doesn't hurt anyone when you pirate online,' when I can't get the full speed on the connection I'm paying for because the ISP is throttling all customers to deter the pirates.

Basically, broheim, what I'm saying is it's immoral to access content for free when other people are paying for it. I really don't get why this is such a difficult concept to grasp.

But it's only immoral in your mind, and moreover, this is jealosy speaking. Your whole logic is based on "Waaagh, why do they get to enjoy it for free and I don't?"

Well, yeah that's kind of how morality works, and this has nothing to do with jealousy and everything to do with morality. I do not grudge the makers of the film the money I paid to see that film because they have created a product which I wish to enjoy and it's an understanding amongst every moral human being on the planet that this transaction should involve money changing hands.

I am not 'jealous' of the man sitting in the the theater for free: I see him as a leech on society who thinks that it's okay for him to freeload because he has the backwards idea in his head that everything in the world is his for the taking, because reasons.

Here's the thing: What if the entire world operated on your broken logic? What if we all stopped paying for stuff and started just taking whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted it? Because you do realise that is basically what you're advocating. There are no victimless crimes, and by supporting piracy, somewhere down the line you are harming the creators of that which is pirated.

As is often the case when dealing with bullshit, this reminds me of an old Penny Arcade strip.

Now please, by all means, tell me why you're on the side of the hippy who thinks nothing should cost anything and that we should all live in a world where we pay for everything with hugs and good thoughts.

 

[McKinsey]

One thing none of you ever consider is that piracy of gigantic files for things like games is one of the driving reasons behind the heavy bandwidth caps service providers place on their customers. So much for, 'it doesn't hurt anyone when you pirate online,' when I can't get the full speed on the connection I'm paying for because the ISP is throttling all customers to deter the pirates.

Not sure what you're talking about, my Internet speed is OK. In fact, my ISP's been steadily increasing maximum speed over the years - I've always had more than I needed.
And please, talk to me, not "my lot". I don't steal, pirate, plunder, pillage or whatever, I'm just poking holes in your logic here.

I am not 'jealous' of the man sitting in the the theater for free: I see him as a leech on society who thinks that it's okay for him to freeload because he has the backwards idea in his head that everything in the world is his for the taking, because reasons.

Duder, I see that this piracy issue obviously rubs you the wrong way, and I feel for you, but get this: downloading games that you would otherwise never be able to afford is, like, the least awful crime a person could commit. There is no victim. No money is lost. The developer gets +1 new fan and +1 future customer who will buy his following games when he has the means to.
You know what is immoral? Malicious intent. When you do something that you know is going to hurt other people or the environment. In the aforementioned example with the movie theatre literally no one gets hurt. The studio that produced the movie couldn't care less - people with empty wallets don't exist to them. Is it illegal to avoid paying? Yes. Is it immoral? In the Universe's eyes it isn't.

Here's the thing: What if the entire world operated on your broken logic? What if we all stopped paying for stuff and started just taking whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted it? Because you do realise that is basically what you're advocating. There are no victimless crimes, and by supporting piracy, somewhere down the line you are harming the creators of that which is pirated.

Chill. Nobody is out to get you or your stuff. This kind of talk is on the same level as "Videogame violence? Oh, the horror! Our kids will turn into ruthless maniacs!"

Now please, by all means, tell me why you're on the side of the hippy who thinks nothing should cost anything and that we should all live in a world where we pay for everything with hugs and good thoughts.

Ideally? Yeah, we should strive for this. You got a problem with such a world?

 

[Entitled]

So correlations, yes? The explosion of entertainment revenues couldn't possibly have anything to do with an increasingly leisure-focused population? Seems we'd have an easy time attributing increased sales to the wonderful effects of modern agriculture on the free time of the ever-exploding foreign markets of developing nations.

Maybe correlation, maybe not. It doesn't really matter.

If through a decade that didn't have any major self-evident reasons for giving such a boost to the entertainment industry, the supposed negtive effects of piracy were still small enough that they were entirely hidden under the tide of other minor hypothetical influences that we could speculate about, that's clear enough proof that piracy is nowhere close to "destroying" the industry, or even significantly damaging it.

Once upon a time, copyright was installed "for the promotion of the progress of science and useful arts". If that job is being done even with file-sharing taken into account, that's good enough reason to conclude that there is no defensible reason for expanding copyright to it.

And the notion that software pirates, who are probably the most tech-savvy subset of people on the planet, also happen to consume the most media through legal channels doesn't mean piracy isn't bad. It means that people who pirate also buy stuff.

It's certainly a refreshing PoV compared to your anecdote of "Of my half dozen friends who game on PC, precisely NONE of them pay for any games they don't absolutely have to".

You wouldn't let white collar criminals off the hook for stealing sports cars if they were also the number one consumers of sports cars, would you?

I'm pretty sure that stealing sports cars is not white collar crime.

If they don't pay, why should I? If no one pays, how do the games get made?

I'm not sure why you keep going back to the implying that I propose that no one paying for anything. You have already expressed your doubts about whether people would consistently stand up to such a standard, to which I have made my replies, and I'm willing to continue discussing that issue if you have further doubts, but it's hard to stick to the topic if you aren't even willing to acknowledge the existence of the statements already made.

How is this different from advocating for shoplifting because not everyone shoplifts?

Am I justified in stealing fancier clothes to cover the gap, then? Can I steal cable and food? I mean none of these stores are going to go under if I help myself to a few choice items, and I'm obviously entitled.

How is "going without" any games they can't afford a sacrifice of any sort? If you can't afford a speedboat, are you sacrificing a speedboat?

Software pirates help themselves to a quality of life above and beyond their means through theft of entertainment. If I make sacrifices to afford entertainment, shouldn't I commit thefts in other areas of commerce to keep my quality of life on par?

The obvious difference is that theft takes away someone's property, and piracy takes away someone's right to stop you from knowing certain information.

You have a right to own and sell your property, but you also have a right to receive and impart information.

Just like our property is limited for the greater good of society by the government, thrrough taxes, likewise our freedom of information is limited for the sake of the content industry. Both of these can be justified in some cases, but ultimately, your analogies are mixed up.

Property ownership that is a human right, and freedom of information is a human right.

Theft is rejecting a human right, but copyright infringement is rejecting a limit placed on a human right, (regardless of whether that limit was justified).

Except that we've long since discovered language to adequately explain away these other issues. We know why abstinence only sex education doesn't work. We know why criminalizing weed doesn't work. We discovered reasons for the input/output disparity in these systems. No one has done this for software piracy, to my mind. If you can dive into the meat of the system and adequately explain away the imbalance in some fashion that does not damn piracy, I'm all ears. Please explain to me why it's okay for me to pay for my games while other people play the same games for free. Explain why I have to be the adult who pays for my shit but I don't get to punish those who refuse?

Again, you keep going back to your most extreme vision of what piracy could be at it's worst. To continue with the analogy, that's akin to someone saying "Oh, you don't support abstinance only education? So you would be all right with your daughter geting knocked up in high school?". You don't have to be, because that is not what is being argued. There is a middle ground.

The statement that pirating a game that you would have only borrowed anyways is theft, is obviously wrong. The statement that there is no difference between piracy and theft of property, is wrong not just by the letter of the law, but at a fundamental understanding of legal categories.

If the worst thing that you can say about pirating a game instead of borrowing it is that it can be described by the same word as a type of freeloading, and therefore it encourages the same "culture", then you haven't said anything useful.

if you're into quotes, I'll share one of my favorites: "Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere." As reasoning beings, all we do is draw lines. If you're going to eject that basic truth, there's no foundation for human interaction.

Fantastic. So can we go back to discussing why where I draw my lines is more practical than yours, instead of pretending that I'm the anarcho-communist speedboat thief who wants everyone else in te world to benefit from your own personal funding?

So now your argument is that the genie is out of the bottle so whatcha gonna do? If your goal is to make me feel angry and foolish for paying for any of my games, you're nearing your goal.

You are making a good enough argument of that from yourself.

You are deriding every suggestion that people might choose to support the entertainment industry for moral reason, just to avoid being freeloaders, with a "bigger picture" and a game theory of how people will all inevitably skip all payment.

So you are suggesting what, exactly? That people should show an even greater restraint, and never download anything that copyright law declares piracy, for what? Moral reasons?

Sort of a hilarious qualifier there. As long as we're talking about what you've defined as having no economic considerations... it has no economic considerations. Circular. Useless.

Basically this is how this discussion is going:

- So, yesterday I just wanted to test how fast my car can actually go...
- But driving beyond the speed limit is illegal! And unsafe!
- Not always the latter, for example if there is a straight, empty road in the desert with good visibility, it's not significantly more dangerous than following the regulations in common traffic.
- Hah, circular! You just made up some specific conditions to argue with my statement!
- Uh, no, I made up these conditions yesterday, to speed up under the safest possible conditions.


We are not just arguing about hypothetical ideas here, but about stuff that people actually do. Maybe "economically neutral piracy is economically neutral" is circular as a sentence. Still, the knowledge that piracy can be economically neutral under certain conditions, is pretty useful for people who care about not doing harm, and you can't just wish it away by deciding to focus on someone else's different type of piracy.

If you want to make all software 100% free, who would choose to develop the software? As a profession? For no pay?

All software is already free in practice, and moral considerations are by far the largest motive to fund the content industry, whether it's your brand of somehow miguided "piracy is theft" motivation, or my own "don't be a freeeloader"-focused one.

The distopia that you fear has already happened, and this is it. Pretty underwhelming, eh?

Because everyone is pirating intellivision games.

No respect for context. Just an argumentative form rigidly applied to all things at once. If someone can read a thousand year old play for free, why can't someone else play Witcher 3 for free?

If you can't think up an answer to that question, you're descended into a relativistic hellhole from which there really is no return.

You have made a falsifiable statement, and I have falsified it. The Public Domain is a good example that getting hundreds of entertainment hours from someone else's work without paying for it, is not a universally indefensible situation. There is no difference between old and new works, under the moral justification that you have just previously presented yourself.

Yes, in many other ways, there is a difference between older and newer works. Go ahead start moving the goalposts, make some of the further argument of why they are different, and let's see if I have something to say to that one as well.

I don't see how the world would thrive (or not fall apart) with you at the helm.

Yeah, by allowing people to download video games and songs for free from online, my ways would make the whole world's copyright system descend into the same madness that is Switzerland and the Netherlands.

And I'm not even a capitalist.

Yeah, I kind of had that feeling based on your staunch apologism of government-granted monopolies, and market regulations preferred over free trade.

 

[CloudAtlas]

If you consider games as "experience goods", a classification which is appropriate to my mind, in particular for story-heavy single player games, then the distinction between piracy or borrowing would be moot. If you couldn't "own" a game, in the same way that you cannot "own" watching a movie at the cinema, or a travel, but were paying for the right to experience the game (whether just once or not), then you could obviously not borrow a game. Of course used games wouldn't exist either, as they shouldn't, but that's another story.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

If through a decade that didn't have any major self-evident reasons for giving such a boost to the entertainment industry, the supposed negtive effects of piracy were still small enough that they were entirely hidden under the tide of other minor hypothetical influences that we could speculate about, that's clear enough proof that piracy is nowhere close to "destroying" the industry, or even significantly damaging it.

The industry won't be destroyed by piracy. That was never my argument. my argument is that it's bullshit that a portion of us pay for games, and subsequently enable their creation, while a larger group of people actually play those games. It's akin to taxation, except I don't mind people receiving the basic necessities for living (food, shelter, clothing). When it comes to a luxury item, an optional item, like a video game, I don't believe I should be subsidizing anyone. Especially when there is no real correlation (in the first world) between people who can't afford games and people who pirate them. So I guess it's more like taxation with exceptions for people who choose not to be taxed and don't get caught doing so, which obviously doesn't work for shit.

They devs are going to charge what they have to to continue making games. That price is fixed by the number of paying customers. If the number of paying customers is negatively impacted by piracy, the cost for paying customers increases. I mean if you believe in the free market and capitalism and all that jazz keeping video games appropriately priced, then piracy factors into that equation - period. If more people paid, because no one pirated, the devs could charge each person less. By willingly paying for the games I play, I'm also paying more than I have to to play them because someone else is too much of a d-bag to contribute. I'm not seeing a compelling counter argument from you on this front. If your only comeback is "they've decided it is moral to pirate, and you haven't, and that's a disagreement but no one is 'right'", I'm not having it. I'm feeling real world consequences for the freeloading of others, and I view that as unfair to me. If you think the world is just fine with one subset paying for software and another subset taking it for free, I think you're insane.

It's certainly a refreshing PoV compared to your anecdote of "Of my half dozen friends who game on PC, precisely NONE of them pay for any games they don't absolutely have to".

I was aware of what constitutes anecdotal evidence before I stated that. You aren't tearing anything apart. Explain to me why pirates would suddenly decided to pay for something they've been taking for free? What is the motivation there? They've already crossed the one line. Why cross back, periodically, for moral points? It doesn't make sense. It's like stealing half your food from the grocery store but paying for the other half because... ? If my anecdote was meant to indicate anything, it's that of the many software pirates I personally know, none are "partial pirates" - and I think this is because the concept is ridiculous.

I'm pretty sure that stealing sports cars is not white collar crime.

Depends on the cars, doesn't it?

I'm not sure why you keep going back to the implying that I propose that no one paying for anything. You have already expressed your doubts about whether people would consistently stand up to such a standard, to which I have made my replies, and I'm willing to continue discussing that issue if you have further doubts, but it's hard to stick to the topic if you aren't even willing to acknowledge the existence of the statements already made.

I'm saying that proper application of game theory is yielding significant positive gains for people who pirate versus people who don't, so there is actually a compelling reason for everyone to pirate. It's either "paying customers are too stupid to pirate" or "paying customers are too moral to pirate". If it's the first, game theory is going to increase piracy over time in the absence of countermeasures. If it's the second, pirates are immoral.

How is this different from advocating for shoplifting because not everyone shoplifts?

The obvious difference is that theft takes away someone's property, and piracy takes away someone's right to stop you from knowing certain information.

You have a right to own and sell your property, but you also have a right to receive and impart information.

Just like our property is limited for the greater good of society by the government, thrrough taxes, likewise our freedom of information is limited for the sake of the content industry. Both of these can be justified in some cases, but ultimately, your analogies are mixed up.

Property ownership that is a human right, and freedom of information is a human right.

Theft is rejecting a human right, but copyright infringement is rejecting a limit placed on a human right, (regardless of whether that limit was justified).

I have a right to know what's wrong with my body. I should be able to defraud medical institutions, such as hospitals and doctors, to the best of my ability, because I am entitled to the information they discover about my body. They've rendered a service, of course, but there is frequently no physical property created. So why am I paying for medical care (or why is the state paying for it on my behalf) like a sucker?

Devs work hard on games. I think they should be compensated for it. I don't think it should fall on a percentage of the people who play the games to do the compensating. These are moral considerations. If you want to call them arbitrary, I believe we're entering into a pointless semantic debate. Although to be sure, that was ages ago. Final post here, btw.

Again, you keep going back to your most extreme vision of what piracy could be at it's worst. To continue with the analogy, that's akin to someone saying "Oh, you don't support abstinance only education? So you would be all right with your daughter geting knocked up in high school?". You don't have to be, because that is not what is being argued. There is a middle ground.

Why do I get to subsidize the middle ground? If I choose not to do so, what is the impact? If more people choose not to along with me, what then? You're right, there is very little risk of everyone pirating. But what is an acceptable percentage? Who determines it? How can such a thing possibly be decided, monitored, controlled? Doesn't it make more sense to say that people who play games should pay for the games they play and have it settled for everyone? Do we take turns pirating?

The statement that pirating a game that you would have only borrowed anyways is theft, is obviously wrong. The statement that there is no difference between piracy and theft of property, is wrong not just by the letter of the law, but at a fundamental understanding of legal categories.

If the worst thing that you can say about pirating a game instead of borrowing it is that it can be described by the same word as a type of freeloading, and therefore it encourages the same "culture", then you haven't said anything useful.

The difference between pirating a game and borrowing a game is pretty obvious. When you borrow, there are logistics to consider. How many people do you really know in real life? How many of them are worth the time and effort of handing off a game? How often do you get them back? You obviously can't play it while the other person has it. Compare this to piracy, where you can obtain the game from a complete stranger, an infinite number of people can possess and play it simultaneously, and none of this is bound by the logistics of location or physical inventory.

Content creators were never crazy about allowing people to lend media. Piracy, via the insane transfer rates and reach of high speed internet, is obviously another beast entirely. If you're going to continue to pair them as like, it's not worth talking about.

Fantastic. So can we go back to discussing why where I draw my lines is more practical than yours, instead of pretending that I'm the anarcho-communist speedboat thief who wants everyone else in te world to benefit from your own personal funding?

Is this supposed to be clever? The last part is even true. You do want everyone else in the world to benefit from my funding of this industry - including people who didn't fund it themselves. That's probably why I dislike folks on your side of this argument. You wag your tongue all about and flaunt whatever philosophical nonsense seems to fit your arguments while I watch the dollars go from my pocket to the creators to (eventually) someone who didn't pay for product.

Not a lot of philosopher world leaders, are there?

You are deriding every suggestion that people might choose to support the entertainment industry for moral reason, just to avoid being freeloaders, with a "bigger picture" and a game theory of how people will all inevitably skip all payment.

So you are suggesting what, exactly? That people should show an even greater restraint, and never download anything that copyright law declares piracy, for what? Moral reasons?

Yes? What I'm actually coming around to, in an unfortunate turn of events, is unbelievably strict DRM. Like the always-online variety. If people are so deluded as to think they're pirating without affecting anyone at all, then I'm all for the content providers doing everything in their power to completely shut those people out. I mean I respect people who say "I'm taking stuff I didn't pay for and it's probably wrong". But someone who has warped the language of the arguments to actually deny the immorality of piracy? Makes me sympathize with the EA's of the world.

We are not just arguing about hypothetical ideas here, but about stuff that people actually do. Maybe "economically neutral piracy is economically neutral" is circular as a sentence. Still, the knowledge that piracy can be economically neutral under certain conditions, is pretty useful for people who care about not doing harm, and you can't just wish it away by deciding to focus on someone else's different type of piracy.

Last I checked, we elected people to decide what qualifies as "economically neutral". I don't think that determination should lie with a person who has everything to gain from stretching those conditions well beyond reason. Again, explain to me the partial pirate? How is that a thing? Who justifies some piracy but not all? I'm talking, of course, about stuff that you could easily buy. I mean if you want to play some age-old game that can't be found anywhere anymore, pirate away. But I want to know who downloads one AAA PC game and doesn't download another. And yes, I'm very comfortable drawing the line there. If you want to equivocate and turn "pirating an ancient NES game" into the same thing as "pirating Crysis 3", I'm out.

All software is already free in practice, and moral considerations are by far the largest motive to fund the content industry, whether it's your brand of somehow miguided "piracy is theft" motivation, or my own "don't be a freeeloader"-focused one.

The distopia that you fear has already happened, and this is it. Pretty underwhelming, eh?

It's certainly a lot lamer and more expensive (for me) than one where everyone pays their fair share for software. The worst part is, if I were to decide to pirate so that I could save more money for clothes, food, dates, etc., I'd feel bad for the people who didn't do the same. I have a conscience and a respect for my fellow man, so I would view what I'm doing as wrong because it is negatively impacting other consumers. That's the main reason I don't pirate - it wouldn't be fair to other paying customers. That other people won't give me the same consideration is insulting.

You have made a falsifiable statement, and I have falsified it. The Public Domain is a good example that getting hundreds of entertainment hours from someone else's work without paying for it, is not a universally indefensible situation. There is no difference between old and new works, under the moral justification that you have just previously presented yourself.

Yes, in many other ways, there is a difference between older and newer works. Go ahead start moving the goalposts, make some of the further argument of why they are different, and let's see if I have something to say to that one as well.

So you don't think "no one who deserves to profit from this work remains to continue profiting from it" as a reasonable difference? It just so happens that most public domain works are old as dust. Weird that, right? Or they're documentaries or fanfics or some other form of media that no one wants to pay for - and so it's free. Games, on the other hand, have value because people pay for them. Again, who decides which customers get to pirate? Does everyone decide for him/herself? What differentiates the person who opts to pay from the person who doesn't? It can't just be ignorance or stupidity, because then -> game theory. I think it is a moral difference. If you're willing to say that pirates simply subscribe to a different morality, I'll live with that. But I will not acknowledge that it has somehow been "proven" correct. You and others utilize far too many semantic loopholes to convince me (and most reasonable people) that it's okay not to pay for something that a) someone has to pay for, and b) those someones are people just like you.

Yeah, by allowing people to download video games and songs for free from online, my ways would make the whole world's copyright system descend into the same madness that is Switzerland and the Netherlands.

That the entertainment industries don't collapse is thanks to the paying customers. The folks following your ideologies are simply leeches, and I would applaud anything that completely removes them from the equation (not including, you know, genocide and the like).

Yeah, I kind of had that feeling based on your staunch apologism of government-granted monopolies, and market regulations preferred over free trade.

Source? Free trade without complete information (as in informed purchasers, not game/software data for free...) is nonsense and fails to take into account the many ways a powerful arm can subvert or control the "free market". Not sure where the gov-granted monopolies bit comes from - aside obvious social services...

I think your arguments are lousy. We disagree. Moving on.