themaniacboy, on 25 May 2011 - 02:19 PM, said:
You have to buy a new one, but i don't, i have yours.
But pirating a game, is downloading a copy of that game.
Only thing is, the owner still has his game, but you also have his game.
Both still happy.
I'm sorry, but no, this is crap...
What you're paying for is the experience, you give $60 (or whatever amount) to play the game. When you pirate, you get that experience but you're not actually paying for it like you should. You're trying to argue that no one has actually lost anything because the original disc is still in the original owner's hands. With software, it is not about the physical disc, the physical disc is just a medium on which the software is distributed. Publishers make copies of the software/game just like pirates do, but they do so with the expectation that they will receive payment for it. So if you have a copy of the software, it is reasonable to expect that the developers would have received some percentage of the sale value of that software. Because they got nothing while you still played the game, you have effectively stolen money from them by refusing to pay for it. It's about exchange, you get the experience, they get paid for providing that experience. When you pirate, you get the experience, but they don't get paid for it.
Let's say a shop owner figured out how to clone watermelons for free, by your reasoning it is okay to walk out of the shop with such a watermelon without paying for it since the shop owner still has his original watermelon and can clone more of them. The fact is: the shop owner expected to get something in return for that watermelon but got nothing, in other words, you've stolen it. Let's look at it another way: your friend goes to an amusement park and buys one ticket, at home you make copies of that ticket and go on rides for free using your copied tickets. You're saying it's not stealing because they have not lost any of their original tickets. The fact is, it is stealing because it isn't the tickets they are selling, that's not where the value is, the value is in the experience. You don't go to an amusement park to buy tickets, you go there and pay to have fun on the rides, in other words, you pay for the experience.
Software works the same way, the value is not in the DVD, you don't buy the DVD just to have it collecting dust on your shelf, you buy it for the software that is on the DVD, that is what the developer is selling to you. The publisher is only using the DVD as a way to distribute the software, the developer doesn't care whether a copy is distributed electronically or on DVD, the expectation is just that when a copy is made, they would get paid for it so they can feed their family.
As a software developer, I am absolutely disgusted when I read these kinds of comments. When a copy of their software is made (regardless of whether it was copied legally or illegally), the software developer should be paid for providing that software. If you're not paying for the software you are using, there really isn't any other way of putting it, it's theft.
Raz.