Intellectual Property pricing schemes do more than make it hard to empathize, they foster active anger.
So far we've discussed people in less wealthy eurozone countries choosing between paying a significant portion of their income and pirating.
Thats bad, in a way we're describing tools that cost nothing, but are priced in a way that whole economies don't have practical access to them.
It gets worse when you consider places like Africa, where every electronic record of an idea is priced out of reach. Can you imagine if your whole country was basically denied access to reference materials, textbooks, and popular culture? The very ideas that could allow you to work your way out of poverty are withheld.
That is really the boot of the privileged stepping on the neck of the poor. And people feel it and understand that.
I am from Brazil, when I was young, I pirated HEAVILY, and frequently without being even aware of it, there was legal legit stores selling pirated stuff and even paying taxes for it, maybe unaware too that it was pirated...
For example, I paid what is equivalent today (inflation corrected) 17 USD to get the DEMO copy of Wolfenstein 3D.
And to me, paying 17 USD for the DEMO of Wolfenstein 3D, was the coolest stuff ever, because I could play it in first place!
When I heard of "doom", the "legendary game that is wolfenstein 3D but with green floors that cause damage and bloody monsters", I wanted it badly... All I could find about it was hearsay, no legal copies, even of a demo existed, no pirated copies existed either! The few people that played it was only on someone else computer, they described it to me, and I really wanted to see it, they described a technical marvel, something awesome!
My dad is a engineer, he was hired by Kia Motors to do some contract stuff for them, he found out that the CEO (or president, or some other extremely high level executive, forgot the details, I was just a kid) of Brazil Kia Motors had a imported legal copy of Doom, and Doom2, he mentioned to the guy, and he made a copy for me, 20 floppies.
I took care of them like if they were the most precious things ever, because floppies that I had were easy to corrupt, and Doom, and Doom2 was too priceless to lose, and it took too much work to get it (I ended visiting Kia motors with my dad several times, and helping a bit when I was allowed to, the total effort to get the thing was something like several months of visiting Kia a lot, nagging people, paying attention, helping install steel cable structures...).
And it was worth it, Doom was legendary as I imaginated in my head (even using PC Speaker audio, because a real sound car costed here about 20 times the monthly mininum wage), I wanted to make it too, I wanted to be a programmer able to create my own Doom, I needed to learn C, and whatnot, the game was fun, and working a lot to get that pirated copy was very worth it.
Then I wonder, what would have happened if Doom and Doom2 had some strong DRM that prevented the Kia executive from making a copy for me?
So far we've discussed people in less wealthy eurozone countries choosing between paying a significant portion of their income and pirating.
Thats bad, in a way we're describing tools that cost nothing, but are priced in a way that whole economies don't have practical access to them.
It gets worse when you consider places like Africa, where every electronic record of an idea is priced out of reach. Can you imagine if your whole country was basically denied access to reference materials, textbooks, and popular culture? The very ideas that could allow you to work your way out of poverty are withheld.
That is really the boot of the privileged stepping on the neck of the poor. And people feel it and understand that.