Instead of the two pages I typed out, let's just do the tl;dr.
Piracy is, simply put, wrong. It's a personal insult to the content creators, telling them that the hundreds or thousands of hours they put into creating this content are worth absolutely nothing and they don't deserve to see compensation for it. It's a sign of immaturity and poor impulse control and/or total disregard for the rule of law: you don't get to pick and choose what laws to follow based on personal convenience or personal preference. Trying to argue that you do is simply mind-numbing fucking stupidity. If a law is actively limiting your freedoms--which piracy laws in no way do, because games and music and such are luxuries, not necessities, so you have no inherent right to them whatsoever unless you yourself create them--you have every right to oppose it and break it, but even then, you don't get to ***** about the consequences, because you knew them before breaking the law. You don't get to say "I don't like this law, so I won't follow it." Piracy removes incentive--believe it or not, sales are actually (gasp!) related to how much a content creator gets paid. Whether it's an advance in anticipation of how big the sales will be or simple royalties, it all depends on how much money will be made. Pirating something lowers that number and gives creators much less incentive to make stuff.
And a general refutation to a commonly-thrown around point. The "I wouldn't have bought it anyways" is absolutely horseshit as an argument. That doesn't entitle you to get a free copy of anything, digital, tangible, or otherwise. And no, you probably wouldn't have bought it anyways, but that's because you can pirate it for free. If you couldn't pirate it, you very likely would have bought it, either now or once the price has dropped. That argument seems to rely very heavily on circular logic--"because there is piracy as an option, I will not pay for this, because I was not going to pay for it anyways because I can get it for free!" Piracy justifying piracy. Bullshit, failure logic.
And can we please, please, please stop pretending that people pirate for some sort of weird moral purpose? That it's "because fuck the establishment" or whatever? Overwhelmingly, it's just because it's cheaper and easier. If people would just up and admit "I don't want to pay X dollars for this, so I get it for free," then piracy discussions would be much more productive and probably much less flame-batey than the current attempts to morally justify the action or try to give it the high ground.
A comment on used game sales: the only reason I don't condemn them is because they're perfectly and absolutely legal. If they ever become illegal, then yes, they will be on the same page as piracy. Devs see nothing from the sale, it's a way of getting a copy of the content without compensating the creators, etc. The only redeeming factors are "you still like it enough to pay for it," but that doesn't mean much when people sank millions into production, and that it keeps physical brick-and-mortar game stores afloat, but in the era of digital distribution, they're becoming fast irrelevant anyways.
And this is where I leave this topic because nothing good can come of it.
Piracy is, simply put, wrong. It's a personal insult to the content creators, telling them that the hundreds or thousands of hours they put into creating this content are worth absolutely nothing and they don't deserve to see compensation for it. It's a sign of immaturity and poor impulse control and/or total disregard for the rule of law: you don't get to pick and choose what laws to follow based on personal convenience or personal preference. Trying to argue that you do is simply mind-numbing fucking stupidity. If a law is actively limiting your freedoms--which piracy laws in no way do, because games and music and such are luxuries, not necessities, so you have no inherent right to them whatsoever unless you yourself create them--you have every right to oppose it and break it, but even then, you don't get to ***** about the consequences, because you knew them before breaking the law. You don't get to say "I don't like this law, so I won't follow it." Piracy removes incentive--believe it or not, sales are actually (gasp!) related to how much a content creator gets paid. Whether it's an advance in anticipation of how big the sales will be or simple royalties, it all depends on how much money will be made. Pirating something lowers that number and gives creators much less incentive to make stuff.
And a general refutation to a commonly-thrown around point. The "I wouldn't have bought it anyways" is absolutely horseshit as an argument. That doesn't entitle you to get a free copy of anything, digital, tangible, or otherwise. And no, you probably wouldn't have bought it anyways, but that's because you can pirate it for free. If you couldn't pirate it, you very likely would have bought it, either now or once the price has dropped. That argument seems to rely very heavily on circular logic--"because there is piracy as an option, I will not pay for this, because I was not going to pay for it anyways because I can get it for free!" Piracy justifying piracy. Bullshit, failure logic.
And can we please, please, please stop pretending that people pirate for some sort of weird moral purpose? That it's "because fuck the establishment" or whatever? Overwhelmingly, it's just because it's cheaper and easier. If people would just up and admit "I don't want to pay X dollars for this, so I get it for free," then piracy discussions would be much more productive and probably much less flame-batey than the current attempts to morally justify the action or try to give it the high ground.
A comment on used game sales: the only reason I don't condemn them is because they're perfectly and absolutely legal. If they ever become illegal, then yes, they will be on the same page as piracy. Devs see nothing from the sale, it's a way of getting a copy of the content without compensating the creators, etc. The only redeeming factors are "you still like it enough to pay for it," but that doesn't mean much when people sank millions into production, and that it keeps physical brick-and-mortar game stores afloat, but in the era of digital distribution, they're becoming fast irrelevant anyways.
And this is where I leave this topic because nothing good can come of it.
