Seriously? SERIOUSLY?! Nothing infuriates me more than when a talk about something illegal devolves into comparisons to rape.

It's not the same, and you know it's not the same. It's a last ditch method for winning an argument.

Good day.

The developer is a really nice and helpful guy so it's no surprise to me that he has an enlightened attitude to this sort of thing.

The argument ultimately isn't about whether or not it's wrong, the argument is that by using the term theft it's easier to convince people to oppose it.

It also has the effect of suggesting that the developer has been harmed in an easily understood way rather than the more complex lost opportunity to sell.

I don't like people using the theft description just because it's far more complicated. I myself used to buy far more CDs and such when I used to pirate. These days I'm back to pirating things, but purely because here in China it's basically impossible to buy things legitimately. I have a few discs of Chinese movies on my desk, and I doubt those are legitimate even though I bought them in retail containers.

My roommate had the Big Bang Theory that he'd bought and it looks legitimate, until you try and watch and see the TV network logo at the bottom of the screen.

But, all those copies get destroyed before I go home and the ones that are worth buying will be purchased when I go home. Even pay services like Netflix and Hulu aren't supposed to be used from China. Even if one pays for them.
I have no comment, but +1 for taking the high road.

Copyright infringement (not piracy, piracy indicates removing exclusive use of an object from an individual) has nothing to do with theft, except in the case where a consumer decides to infringe a copyrighted work as opposed to buying it.

The burden to proof that "lost sales" exist, and to what extent, is the copyright holders. Saying that "sales have dropped 44%", does nothing exhaust this burden, even if the rights holder can show that for each lost sale, a copy was downloaded.

What many of you fail to realize, as you are brainwashed to see the world through the eyes of physical media being sold by the each to passive consumers, is that the changing market means that the business models these companies relied on is inappropriate now.

This is why there has not been more widespread legal action against infringers, as the rights holders know that their argument is insufficient. The reason they primarily go against torrent sites instead of users, is that torrent sites can be held liable by implication for SOME piracy, which does not have to be quantified, while a suit against an individual would have to be..

It blows my mind how corporatized webizens are becoming these days. Why do you people support parties that sue their fans? in Canada, a massive suit by a major record label was decried by the vast majority of the artists represented by the suit, as they realize that suing their fans, who support them in every way, is suicidal.

Who's left after you sue everyone who doesn't have a physical media disc or book for every piece of copyright they wish to consume?

Give me a break. Promoting endless desire to those with fixed disposable income means you end up with endless demand for copyright infringement. Move on.

I would say that you have brainwashed mind because not a single person in this topic said that piracy is theft or said any words about supporting companies that sue their fans.

Oh really? Guilty by implication is still guilty.

Wouldn't be surprised if Mcpixel was the first game to go through Greenlight.

Just why is this debate still going? Semantic issues? Look how easy it is to resolve them:

If you take something that isn't yours, you're a dick.
If you download something you could have bought, you're a dick.
They're not at all the same thing, but the consequence is the same. Namely, that you are a dick.

Bought it less than 1€ on Desura just now. Cheap but no thief.. :)

I felt it is used because there is no other good single term to describe the activity in layman's terms.

"Piracy" in itself is not a good term either because it means attacking trade ships and taking over their goods, or something like that. So I am a bit surprised people aren't complaining "Why are people calling it "piracy"? It has nothing to do with piracy! Arrrrr!" :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy

In my mind "software piracy" is similar action to e.g. slipping into movie theaters in order to watch movies for free, as long as you don't take a seat from any paid customer. A bit similar also to using public transportation without paying for a ticket (albeit one could argue that your added weight consumes a bit of extra gasoline, making the analogy invalid, but that can be considered negligible).

And I guess there are different shades of grey there too. Pirating of some ancient game that no one appears to be interested in selling at all anymore (or ever) is more akin to a group of hippies occupying an old broken house which is just waiting for demolition, and the owner is just sitting on the property for years or decades, waiting for the price of the land to hike. Or then there is no owner at all.

It can be argued the latter is wrong too even though seemingly at first sight it is not causing harm to anyone. E.g. if the hippies wouldn't be able to live in the old house for free "Fight Club"-style, they'd have to rent a proper house from the free market. Hence, their freeloading may be causing some losses (of income) to landlords.

Sounds familiar...

Well said.

Can piracy help a game? Maybe. But if you download a game did you do it to help it? No. You downloaded it because of your own selfish desire to play it. You could have played a free game, or a cheap game that you can afford, or you could have gone out with some friends, but you decided that you need this particular game and you took it because you could.

That's what I'd tell a teenager or a student who doesn't have lots of money, but I also know a lot of adults with well paying jobs who illegally download most of the content they consume. These are people who will freely spend $50 on a meal at a restaurant but not $10 on a DVD, who would spend $2000 on a top of the line PC but not $50 on a game for which they bought such a PC.

As you say, dicks.

The man in the article states that the most important reason for piracy is not having access to paypal or credit cards. I really don't believe in this. I know some pirates and I am almost sure they have credit cards or paypal. The article doesn't seem to be very well argumented.

This is piracy:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7736885.stm
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=abw5Nrj6SIvU&refer=africa
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8080098.stm
http://www.rfi.fr/actuen/articles/112/article_3481.asp
http://af.reuters.com/article/somaliaNews/idAFLDE71E1F520110215
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8406303.stm
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/04/08/ship.hijacked/index.html

Extending the word to something like copyright infringement is disgusting. Somebody in this thread said jokingly that it would not matter if its called kid rape; yeah... its not far off already.