I would agree with your opinion if a vast majority of people who have computers and Internet connections could not afford another $20. But what if there was no pirated version of this game available? I think you'd find that, if it's not too inconvenient, more people would actually buy the game.
For example, console games don't suffer as much from pirating, but what if hypothetically it was as easy to pirate a game for your Wii or 360 as it was for your PC? I very much doubt that people would continue to buy the games.
So basically, the very presence of pirated games available for free is taking sales away from the game makers, people are simply choosing the free option.
You seem to be overlooking the scarceness issue. It's not about Just Another $20. It's about Just Another $20, And Another. And Another.
You are saying that it would be wrong for me to download something, even if the very act of doing so does not make anyone lose any money, take the food from anyone's mouth (etc etc)?
Suppose someone is selling clay pottery. They bought a machine to help them make it, but the clay itself is freely available. They just go down to the riverbed and grab a heap of clay. You could go get the very same clay. It's free; it's a public resource. We'll even say there is infinite clay.
Now then. The producer is using a totally free resource to produce clay pots. It takes a few hours to make each one, and they are very nice. But the only material in the product is a free resource. If you were to steal the pots without paying for them, the producer isn't out anything, because the producer can just go get more clay; no big deal. You've taken no money, you've taken no food. All you've taken is a clay pot, made out of a substance of which the producer has an infinite supply.
What are you saying? The creators of games don't have a value? Ok then, let them know that so they can all stop producing them. It's a terrible shame to have so many people devoted to something that creates no value for anyone.
That's exactly what I was trying to get across. I thought an analogy might help, albeit an imperfect one.
To replicate a computer game is trivial, but when buying a computer game, one is not so much paying for the replicated copy of the software as one is paying for the time and expenses that went into producing it in the first place.
A lot of people do give software away for free, but that's their choice.
I have to be clear that I do not use unlicensed software. I also think that people should not use the software, if they can't afford it.
But I don't agree that all pirated copies are lost sales. Some of them might be of course, but you can't expect that each copy is a lost sale.
Let's use MS Office as an example. Here there is a free alternative (Open Office) that does most of what normal users needs. But the piracy level is very high. This is (originally) a product made for businesses, that most home users certainly don't need. You don't think that most homes would spend $399 on MS Office if MS made it more difficult to copy?
The reason why schools expects reports to be delivered as Word-documents is because it is implied that parents will have a copy of MS Office. This can only work because software can be pirated. If the parents had to spend $399, all schools would accept ODF documents, because there is usually at least one person connected to the school who knows that a free alternative is available.
BTW: "Piracy" is a word that the companies used (probably advised by a PR company), so that it will seem worse. It has worked out very well for them, even the "pirates" use that word. Perhaps I should use a similar strategy against the things I dislike... I will from this day forward interpret DRM as "Digital Rape Model" :-) Copying software is not stealing. It is not legal or (in most cases) ethical, it is it's own form of crime. It may be difficult to define, but calling it "stealing" is not right,
You might as well say that I will steal a potential sale, if I write a false negative fact about a product. It is wrong, but I doubt you can call it stealing.
Yea, I got what you meant and thought it was pretty obvious personally.
What some of these guys don't seem to get is when you buy something physical you pay for the whole thing, production costs and all, right in one go (or if it's too expensive for that you make payments). When you buy media of most any kind you don't because few could afford to pay what it cost to produce. Instead the total cost is kind shared between lots of people. We all sort of pay a percentage. So just like in brick & morter stores: when someone starts stealing product they push price up for everyone else.
> To replicate a computer game is trivial, but when buying a computer game, one is not so much paying for the replicated copy of the software as one is paying for the time and expenses that went into producing it in the first place.
Y'know, I always thought it would be interesting to sell the first X copies of software for a $Y, where $XY is cost of expenses and time you needed to put into it, plus a Z% profit. Any additional feature requests/etc. to that particular software would be developed and sold using the same model.
As always, this kind analogy doesn't apply to digital copies. For the analogy to work each digital copy would need to be recoded from scratch by the original developer.
Yes, believe it or not, that seems to be what he's saying: that if someone demands $20 for something that costs them $0 marginally to provide you, it is in fact still wrong for you to take it without paying $20.
Stupid question. What kind of game have you ever downloaded that cost the developers EXACTLY $0 in time and effort to provide that game?
You probably meant "$0 to them for me to download or copy the bits." But I don't see the point in ignoring the very real costs incurred by the developer in the honest hope of compensation for that labor.
I also get irritated by people (not just you, but others in this thread and legion on the internet) that consider the right to pirate software and entertainment a great human right worthy of moral outrage. I might understand someone tempted to steal health care through some sort of fraud if they can't afford it legally, or justify stealing food or shelter or some basic necessity of human life. But defending the right to steal entertainment (most of it pretty low artistic quality to begin with) is just kind of pathetic and not worth the time expended. You must feel some sort of need to justify your own moral misgivings if you're taking time out to rationalize the virtues of pirating content, when you could be spending that time more productively in finding other content to pirate.
Again, this is not aimed at you, specifically, but also all of the people on Reddit, Slashdot, and Digg who spend so much time coming up with these rationalizations. I have more respect for the people who just pirate and don't claim it as some moral crusade against the Evil RIAA and Friends.
Then don't take something until you have $20 to support them. I'm not perfect when it come to piracy but I do feel guilty enjoying something for free when I know someone put a lot of effort into it expecting compensation.
$20 is cheap too. If you can't afford $20, get a better job. Or spend the time you would have devoted to playing World of Goo teaching yourself the skills to get a better job. Again I'm not perfect but I can't justify stealing a $20 game from an independent developer. Stealing a tv show or $2000 software might be a gray area, but World of Goo deserves support.
Sorry, but this argument is a strawman. Most people who are downloading games free aren't spending all their dollars on games and then downloading the rest once they run out of money.
For example, console games don't suffer as much from pirating, but what if hypothetically it was as easy to pirate a game for your Wii or 360 as it was for your PC? I very much doubt that people would continue to buy the games.
So basically, the very presence of pirated games available for free is taking sales away from the game makers, people are simply choosing the free option.