(November 10, 2014 at 2:57 pm)FifthElement Wrote: No matter how you spin it, piracy is against the LAW.
No shit.
Quote:I'm not talking about impact on sales here...
Interesting...
Quote:It is about taking something which does not belong to you, if you cannot afford it, than, too bad, you are not entitled to it regardless of your "need" to have it, sorry, we agree to disagree here
Y'see, this is where you misunderstand completely my position. My position has nothing to do with whether or not someone can afford to buy something. It has nothing to do with people needing it either. It has to do with the fact that in reality, piracy is relatively harmless to the mega corporations that so desperately want to shut it down, and if anything beneficial to smaller companies trying to compete with them. True, piracy is theft, but not in the traditional understanding of the word. Only in law terms. In fact I think calling piracy 'theft' is a bit of a misnomer, when you consider that in the digital world theft doesn't work quite like in the physical world.
What we're really talking about is intellectual property, or more appropriately to this industry, digital rights management (which I'm currently writing about for my dissertation). An increasing amount of digital distributors are abandoning the notion of DRM. Why? Because it's fucking pointless. You can't control what people make copies of on the internet, and moreover, do you have the right to? Some of the fastest growing game distribution services are ones that allow users to distribute their purchased product as many times as they please. They aren't complaining about people 'stealing' anything. That actually, has quite a bit to do with sales. So you say you're not taking that into account, but it's pretty much the only reason that companies are interested in implementing DRM. It's the only reason intellectual property matters. Because if someone can take your 'product' without paying for it, that's stealing isn't it? That's something the company has lost? That's a sale lost? Wrong. It isn't. Again, you can't talk about whether or not someone would otherwise buy a product. That's pure conjecture. What is important is that one person has bought a product, the real debate should be about whether people are entitled to IP on games that they make and whether they have any right to enforce that on people who have purchased the original copy.
