Mutant1988 said:
I consider your fireworks display off base because 1: The ones offering the fire works intend for it to be seen by everyone that can see it.
Yes, in real life it is, because we are accustomed to the fact that everyone has the ability to see it anyways.
If until the last 20 years ago, you would have needed to buy special goggles to see them, and those would have been sold by pyrotechnicians for a profit, until a technological improvement made them obselete, then you can bet that there would be a continuing desperate expectation from pyrotechnicians to somehow lock down the sky.
That's where media is now. For centuries, books and tapes and discs were scarce, and it was easy to add a price tag to them and shut down mass bootlegging. Copyright was a PRACTICAL arrangement for letting artists profit.
Then suddenly, file-sharing became easily available, and instead of artists intending for everyone to see their works, chose to brand it as piracy, and pretend that they can stop it.
Mutant1988 said:
2: They do not own the night sky to in any way restrict who looks at it or not. 3: Their livelihood very likely doesn't rely on the fireworks being seen by only some people (The ones presumably paying for it).
In the analogy, the fireworks itself stands for the game, the night sky stands for the Internet, the public channel through which it can be accessed.
When you say things like "distributing copyrighted material intended for sale is enabling people to have things they do not deserve to have", you make it sound like it's a specific bit of material that is being controlled by copyright, but really what the copyright owner controls, is a part of the public's ability to receive and impart information with each other.
Mutant1988 said:
3: Their livelihood very likely doesn't rely on the fireworks being seen by only some people (The ones presumably paying for it).
No, they are likely contracted by a corporation that benefits from it in some way, (like in Disneyland), they are hired by the government (4th of July), or put together from an informal sharing or resources by the audience members who can afford it (ad hoc New Years eve fireworks).
But in either case, this is just another example of them being better prepared for the reality of it, and trying to succeed with that in mind.
TLDR, what I'm saying is not that the games industry works like the fireworks pyrotechnicians industry, or that it's members currentl think the same way, but that putting a video game on the Internet is in practice similar to a fireworks display in the night sky, so the industry
should get used to that fact.
There used to be a difference between public performance, and limited availability products. With the internet as an infinite printing press, you can either accept that every performance that you release to the public will be distributed through the WHOLE public, or you can try to censor the channels of public communication and fail at it.
Mutant1988 said:
I don't. But they make for a very convenient excuse. Especially with their obviously self-justifying rhetoric. The way so many of them phrase their support of "piracy" robs them of any sympathy in my eyes.
The problem with that, is that it has little to do with accurate views about the reality of matters.
Sometimes the right anser *is* the one that happens to benefit the speaker. As C. S. Lewis said in an example, during debating with a communist:
The Professor has his own explanation... he thinks that I am unconsciously motivated by the fact that I ?stand to lose by social change?. And indeed it would be hard for me to welcome a change which might well consign me to a concentration camp. I might add that it would likewise be easy for the Professor to welcome a change which might place him in the highest rank of an omnicompetent oligarchy. That is why the motive game is so uninteresting. Each side can go on playing ad nauseam, but when all the mud has been flung every man?s views still remain to be considered on their merits. I decline the motive game and resume the discussion.
Oh, maybe pirates have never created anything in their lives, and they would benefit from freeloading. Or maybe copyright apologists can't face the reality that they can't control file-sharing, and they would self-servingly try to do so as long as possible.
Maybe pirates are risking prison and high fines, for a more free future, and maybe copyright holders just want to feed their families.
Motives can be attached to anything, the facts are what they are anyways. Copying digital data would be a form of communication even if pirates were all greedy scum, and copyrights would desperately try to maintain a censorship regime beyond it's feasibility, even if all copyright holders had hearts of gold.