Piracy staying legal in Switzerland - "Pirates still contribute"

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

The problem is that the figures just don't match up with this interpretation. Most people who pirate will not go on to buy the game legitmately, otherwise that figure the Witcher 2 released last week of 1 in 5 copies being pirated would have ended 'but then we sold another 4 million anyway.' Did it? No, because most people who had pirated the game then didn't go on to buy it.

But the inverse is also true.
If you completely remove the possibility to pirate something, a pirate who would otherwise get the game through piracy would still not buy it. In fact, you'd probably sell fewer copies due to decreased interest.

Advertisement is a powerful force. Why do people pay tens of thousands of dollars to advertise their product or service next to highways? Do all people who see the ad purchase the product or service? Do most people? In fact, only a small fraction of people who see it go on to pay for it. It is still worth it for the one who invested in the ad, since that small fraction still makes up a lot of people. A pirated game works in a similar way. It's free self-perpetuating advertisement. Again, only a small number of people will actually buy it, but some will, and that's a increase in sales for no investment. Couple that with word of mouth, and there's a significant amount of extra sales.

Again, word of mouth and advertisement is an incredibly powerful commercial force.
Piracy is both of those, for all its ills.

The facts do not reflect this viewpoint.

Since downloading became a thing, legitimate sales of music have dropped by half

http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news/companies/napster_music_industry/

and PC game sales crashed at exactly the same time.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/PC_gaming

This cannot be explained by saying 'people wouldn't have bought the game anyway' because the evidence is that they would have. This generation has somehow been brought up with the idea that Entertainment has no monetary value. Somehow creative content is becoming basically worthless, and it's not being helped by people like Randal Monroe going on about Creative Commons Distribution, but that is an entirely separate issue.

And do you know what gets really hurt? The games industry. Because they are industries that ned to turn a profit, and you can't turn a profit on a system with a game that is going to pirated no matter how cheap you make it. Remember the Humble Indie Bundle or whatever it was? All you had to pay was as little as a penny to receive it, and people still pirated it, which in my book is near conclusive proof that people are assholes.

So what do game companies do when they can't trust that the game they're making it going to make profit? Whoever is making the Witcher games will probably not be able to justify making the next game, since they've only shifted a million copies, which will convince the executives that it isn't earning the sorts of profits it should. And then they'll look at games which are making profits, and what's making the biggest profit right now because despite the millions of illegal copies it's still shifting enough legally to make profit?

Modern Warfare 3.

So, in Executive 'we need to make profit' logic, they will tell the game designers to stop working on the Witcher 3 because it only sold a million copies, and start working on Modern Battlefield, since that will be guaranteed to sell.

Next time anyone who pirates complains about games become all homogenised and shit, you are exactly the reason why they are becoming homogenised. This is of course now becoming a vicious circle, because a lot of pirates will deliberately pirate to try and hurt the companies and get them to stop making modern FPSs, but modern FPSs will thus become more desirable.

I'm personally hoping for another 1983 crash caused entirely by piracy.

 

[Dogstile]

Why do people keep calling piracy "stealing"? It's stupid really.

Last time I checked, taking something without paying for it IS stealing. Any nonsense about how you "didn't take a physical thing" and "data is infinitely copyable" is just justifying it to yourself, and a thin justification as that. Taking something without paying for it is stealing.

Except 'taking' isn't the right word . Nothing is 'taken'. Taken & all its synonyms imply that something has moved from a rightful owner to a thief. Not the case with software piracy.

There needs to be a better word for data-copying than 'stealing' or 'piracy'.

Any ideas?..

Being a dick? Its still a dick move, no matter how you swing it. And i'm not massively opposed to piracy, its always on a case by case basis (Such as no demo for pc? I can understand why someone would download it to try) but yeah, being a dick is roughly my term for it

 

[maxben]

I saw this before, so here's my take for those who are confused:

Anti-piracy advocates claim that piracy impacts their bottom line. The Swiss government decided to test this. What they found was that about 1/3 of the sample surveyed had pirated media in the past, and they found that this 1/3, on average, contributed just as much, if not more, than the 2/3 who did not pirate (again, on average) on any given metric (Such as amount of cash spent and number of products purchased).

The conclusion was that since pirates don't appear to be spending any less money on CDs, games, movies, etc. as non-pirates, the argument that piracy saps money away from the entertainment industry doesn't hold up, and the Swiss government decided that their copyright laws do not have to be tightened in an effort to fight an unproven villain.

I like how yours is the most accurate explanation for what's going on and what the Swiss government's reasoning is, but everyone is responding to flamebait.
Seriously people, all this talk about morality, and stealing, and that the Swiss government is wrong BECAUSE some poster shortened their stance for brevity's sake and missed all the details is just stupid.
The whole discussion should have ended with what you said.

Edit: I can't help the flamebait. So help me God I have to respond.....

DO you really measure others based on one thing they do wrong or on an average of things they've done/said/are? For me its the second one, and so the reasoning that pirates aren't bad because they contribute as much or more than non-pirates on average I think is fair practical reasoning.

If you decide that piracy=stealing than this doesn't change your mind, but that wasn't the point of this inquiry. The Swiss government needed to test the overall damage of piracy, and that is what they did. Because they come to it being nothing or negative, they decided that they don't want to deal with the theoretical debate over possibly unconstitutional laws. If they found that there was damage, they would have tested the constitutionality of it by passing laws and having them challenged by the constitutional court. That's practical Continental law for you, dealing with theory without proof and facts is actively discouraged.

This technique would not work in a country with Common Law(Anglo-Saxon Tradition) because theoretical arguments are encouraged and used regularly. I think this confuses a lot of people on this thread. Its easy to think of different systems that look different and function different, but its hard to imagine a completely different logic and paradigm.

Second Edit: The Swiss are also generally conservative, neutral, and bureaucratic in their governance style and law in general, which means they are slow to change. There is a reason why they allow euthanasia but women couldn't vote in all of Switzerland until the 1990s (canton system and direct democracy is weird).

 

[Levethian]

I saw this before, so here's my take for those who are confused:

Anti-piracy advocates claim that piracy impacts their bottom line. The Swiss government decided to test this. What they found was that about 1/3 of the sample surveyed had pirated media in the past, and they found that this 1/3, on average, contributed just as much, if not more, than the 2/3 who did not pirate (again, on average) on any given metric (Such as amount of cash spent and number of products purchased).

The conclusion was that since pirates don't appear to be spending any less money on CDs, games, movies, etc. as non-pirates, the argument that piracy saps money away from the entertainment industry doesn't hold up, and the Swiss government decided that their copyright laws do not have to be tightened in an effort to fight an unproven villain.

I like how yours is the most accurate explanation for what's going on and what the Swiss government's reasoning is, but everyone is responding to flamebait.
Seriously people, all this talk about morality, and stealing, and that the Swiss government is wrong BECAUSE some poster shortened their stance for brevity's sake and missed all the details is just stupid.
The whole discussion should have ended with what you said.

Agreed. Going to quote this in the OP if you don't mind, Duskflamer

Being a dick?

Doesn't have the ring I was hoping for. Dickacy?

 

[Pandabearparade]

so, what they are saying is that it's ok to steal things if you can't afford it?

It isn't 'theft'. If isn't like taking a candy bar where once it's consumed, it's gone. It's just copied data. Data that took a large investment of time and money to produce, but copying isn't equal to theft.

That said it's still wrong, but it's nowhere near as wrong as most of the people on this site would suggest. You'd think pirates were worse than baby eaters around here.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

Another piracy thread.

"One in three people in Switzerland download unauthorized music, movies and games from the Internet and since last year the government has been wondering what to do about it. This week their response was published and it was crystal clear. Not only will downloading for personal use stay completely legal, but the copyright holders won?t suffer because of it, since people eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products."


Moral absolutes aside (stealing is wrong & developers should be supported), this seems to makes logical sense. It's tantamount to free advertising; the building of a fan-base who will spend cash on the medium when they can.

The problem is that the figures just don't match up with this interpretation. Most people who pirate will not go on to buy the game legitmately, otherwise that figure the Witcher 2 released last week of 1 in 5 copies being pirated would have ended 'but then we sold another 4 million anyway.' Did it? No, because most people who had pirated the game then didn't go on to buy it.

There are several flaws in your post.

First of all, there is no way to track the number of pirated copies. They just pull those numbers out of their ass and throw it on the internet.

Second part is that no one knows how many people who downloaded the game actually played it. 1 of my friends downloads at least 1 game per week from the internet. He installs it, tries it and deletes it. He never plays it again. But if he finds a game he likes, really likes, he deletes the game and buys the original. Or sometimes finishes the game, waits for a discount and then buys it since he thinks that the game isn't worth the full price.
There are many people who simply delete the game. I would say that over 50% pirates delete and don't play it. If the games had demos, the numbers would be lower.

A big part of those who didn't buy the game after downloading it are people who didn't like the game.

 

[Therumancer]

Snip for Sanity

As a Swiss person, both of you are hilarious. Why?

1. Switzerland is not some military power house.
2. I'm sure Germany and the rest of Europe would be real happy about the US dropping a bunch of shit smack bang in the middle of Europe. 'We don't care what anyone thinks' You will when they wont buy your stuff or sell you tech.

This is about economics, not some stupid attempt to predict what war between Switzerland and the US would look like. Not just because it wont happen, but largely because not you, or me, is in any position to make such assessments.

The US and other big economies can pressure Switzerland through economics. Switzerland relies heavily on the export of goods and services, cutting off a market like the US, Germany, Italy or the UK would be a massive blow. This is exactly what was being thrown around (in diluted forms of course) to get some compromise on the banking secrecy laws.

All of this of course is being done while still recognizing that Switzerland produces goods and services of importance to the world economy, including the US. That's why it was a compromise decision. It allowed both parties to go back to their electorates saying that a great victory had been won. Exactly the same thing could one day happen with regard to IP, not just CH, but also the rest of Europe, and of course China. The US is a big player, but bombing economies and enslaving them is not the best way to do business.

Well, Switzerland only became the flashpoint for the discussion because of the article focusing on it. The bottom line is that you guys don't want to make piracy a crime because it's a deteriment for you to do so, where it benefits nations that are heavily dependant on IPs.

I don't think it's a situation where the benefits of the Swiss economy to nations like the US weigh into it, because if those benefits outweighted the problem we wouldn't be seeing this issue going multi-national.

What we're seeing right now is the US doing it's whole "moral paragon" thing and trying diplomacy first, and seeing how many nations will agree to respect it's IPs and deal with piracy as a crime before it starts taking hardcore action. Overall it's not going really well, and I think like most things we're actually in a position where once we ask we're not going to be willing to lower the boom on anyone for moral reasons.

Saying the we should invade is more of a general declaration, because I think the US needs to start doing more to represent it's own interests.

While I tend to focus on the military on the internet, to be honest I think the US would probably do better right now to start leveraging policies like this through people's stomachs. The root of US power is actually not it's military, despite being tops there, but the fact that it controls most of the civilized world's food supply through it's production of wheat. Very, very few nations domestically produce enough food to feed their populations with their own resources. When this has been suggested the US morality has dictated a policy of "we will not use food as a weapon". While it may or may not work well on Switzerland in paticular, I think we could sway a lot of nations by simply refusing to provide food for
them at all if they don't step into line. Our policy of NOT using our wheat to leverage people has caused a lot of the world to forget that aspect of why we're a global super
power and how much they need the US. Evem Asia (which is largely based on Rice) is having some problems and is seeing trade for US Wheat.

See, with our economic woes, my attitude is that we should basically stop the international meals on wheels attitude, and raise the prices on our wheat globally. While not nice, the bottom line is the US is in a rough spot economically and can't afford to run charity like we have been in the past. In cases where nations want to oppose US policy, not respect IP laws, and other things, I have no real problem with cutting them off. Basically make piracy illegal or we'll see how well you get by eating illegally downloaded movies.

The military aspect of things comes up so often because really I think the US needs to remind the world how powerful we are here, because I think we're not being taken seriously. A military is not a deterrant or form of leverage if nobody respects it, or thinks your going to use it. For example the guy speaking for your country seems to think that the Swiss having a fairly militarized population with a lot of assault rifles would actually be an effective defense against the US if it meant business. I'm not saying Switzerland doesn't have anything better, it's just about that one paticular point. This perception comes from the US choosing to go into places like Afghanistan and Iraq on the ground and fight people in their back yards gun to gun in a police action. I think the world... which increasingly likes to paint the US as being corrupt, immoral, and evil, doesn't get it and fails to realize that these alleged "atrocities" are actually us using kid gloves compared to what we could do.

Even if we don't wipe it out entirely, I think slapping around a nation that thinks it's tough in a way where it can't even fight back, would accomplish a lot. I think it would also do a lot for global peace in addition to the US's own agenda, because like it or not the US *does* act as peacekeepers globally, and I think there are problems because nations kept in line by the threat of US intervention (perhaps through the US) just aren't all that scared of the thought of us driving in a few hummers and having soldiers they can shoot at up and down the street. Some people might intellectually understand it, but I think need an emotional reminder that we can literally end an entire town or city, or pick off a leader, with the push of a button from well outside the engagement range of all but a few countries.

I am *NOT* a nice guy, and yes I am an American. I'm just a pissed off American because I'm tired of taking a lot of crap globally and in the media (social and otherwise) while seeing our interests fail or disappear one after another because we refuse to do anything because "it would be wrong" or "there would be too much collateral damage". There *IS* such a thing as going too far or being unnessicarly violent or militant, but when you look at the cumulative effect of things, I don't think this is it.

See to me, the situation with you guys (The Swiss) is one where it's a small thing, but still a case where the US is going to wind up losing a lot of money both to it's businesses and the goverment. A lot of incidents like that add up, and I think there is a point where we do need to start making some examples. Not because I revel in blood for the sake of blood (or replace blood wit famine for the comments about the wheat) or anything, but because with our economy in a shambles I increasingly don't care for nations deciding it's okay to rob us.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Bottom line is, people like freedom of choice. Take that away from them will never be profitable. What USA doesn't understand is human psyche.

 

[Ashannon Blackthorn]

The problem is that the figures just don't match up with this interpretation. Most people who pirate will not go on to buy the game legitmately, otherwise that figure the Witcher 2 released last week of 1 in 5 copies being pirated would have ended 'but then we sold another 4 million anyway.' Did it? No, because most people who had pirated the game then didn't go on to buy it.

Or in my case, I really want the game, I'll pirate it to see if I like it. If I do I go buy it. I enjoy having the actual physical box and items. So do a lot of people. People like having stuff. It's a status symbol. (Hey look at all the stuff I have) People use it to feel good about themselves (Hey look at all my awesome stuff, I'm awesome) or sometimes ot lord it over others (Don't you wish you had my awesome stuff?)

George Carlin-esque reply notwithstanding I don;t wanna spend 80 bucks of something and not know if I like it. (I want stuff not shit. You can have the shit, I want the stuff)

So you can;t just say most didn't go buy it. how do you know how many did or did not? Of the ones that pirated how many did, like myself and quite a few of my friends, buy the game in question afterwards?

 

[Sight Unseen]

...Not only will downloading for personal use stay completely legal, but the copyright holders won?t suffer because of it, since people eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products."

...It's tantamount to free advertising; the building of a fan-base who will spend cash on the medium when they can.

Neither one of those statements make any sense at all. If someone can get something for free with absolutely no consequences, what the hell would be the incentive to go spend money on that same something?

Using myself as an example, I sometimes download music for free, from bands which I do not know very well. If I like that band, and I decide that their music is good quality, then I will buy their next albums that come out, go see them in concert when they come to town, buy a T-shirt, buy their other past albums that I don't have, buy their songs in Rock Band etc.

There's a large number of bands that owe their thanks to piracy for me becoming a fan and spending money on them. Rise Against (my favourite band), Dream Theater, Sonata Arctica, Disturbed, the list goes on and on.

I dont like spending a lot of money on something where I really don't know what the outcome will be. Once I know that I like a band/game's style, I will be much more inclined to throw money at them later on.I don't think I'm the only person with this mentality.

 

[Ashannon Blackthorn]

While I tend to focus on the military on the internet, to be honest I think the US would probably do better right now to start leveraging policies like this through people's stomachs. The root of US power is actually not it's military, despite being tops there, but the fact that it controls most of the civilized world's food supply through it's production of wheat. Very, very few nations domestically produce enough food to feed their populations with their own resources. When this has been suggested the US morality has dictated a policy of "we will not use food as a weapon". While it may or may not work well on Switzerland in paticular, I think we could sway a lot of nations by simply refusing to provide food for
them at all if they don't step into line. Our policy of NOT using our wheat to leverage people has caused a lot of the world to forget that aspect of why we're a global super
power and how much they need the US. Evem Asia (which is largely based on Rice) is having some problems and is seeing trade for US Wheat.

Erm... China and India all produce more wheat than the US. Australia, Canada and Russia while making less still make quite a lot of wheat... the US does not have any form of stranglehold on the global wheat economy by any sense of the meaning. While India and China and Russia all have large population, Australia and Canada do not.

If the US started doing what you suggest, I have a suspicion that those other top 4 countries would step up to cover the imbalance and then the US would be in a lot of crap as I'm sure other countries would start withholding stuff the US desperately needs... uranium, rare earth metals, oil, natural gas, precision parts for military and industrial techs...

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

snip.

There are several flaws in your post.

First of all, there is no way to track the number of pirated copies. They just pull those numbers out of their ass and throw it on the internet.

Second part is that no one knows how many people who downloaded the game actually played it. 1 of my friends downloads at least 1 game per week from the internet. He installs it, tries it and deletes it. He never plays it again. But if he finds a game he likes, really likes, he deletes the game and buys the original. Or sometimes finishes the game, waits for a discount and then buys it since he thinks that the game isn't worth the full price.
There are many people who simply delete the game. I would say that over 50% pirates delete and don't play it. If the games had demos, the numbers would be lower.

A big part of those who didn't buy the game after downloading it are people who didn't like the game.

snip.

Or in my case, I really want the game, I'll pirate it to see if I like it. If I do I go buy it. I enjoy having the actual physical box and items. So do a lot of people. People like having stuff. It's a status symbol. (Hey look at all the stuff I have) People use it to feel good about themselves (Hey look at all my awesome stuff, I'm awesome) or sometimes ot lord it over others (Don't you wish you had my awesome stuff?)

George Carlin-esque reply notwithstanding I don;t wanna spend 80 bucks of something and not know if I like it. (I want stuff not shit. You can have the shit, I want the stuff)

So you can;t just say most didn't go buy it. how do you know how many did or did not? Of the ones that pirated how many did, like myself and quite a few of my friends, buy the game in question afterwards?

http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news/companies/napster_music_industry/

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/PC_gaming

There's some nice figures for you. Those figures would not exist if pirating did not happen. No, you can't chart how many games are actually being pirated, and no you can't tell how many people are pirating, then going back and buying, but what you can see very clearly is that when more people have the means and opportunity and in fact want to buy games and music, the numbers are instead dereasing.

With the advent of iTunes, and the amount of people with more disposable income and more reason to buy music, legal music sales should have rocketed through the roof, instead they've halved. What else happened in 1999? Illegal music downloading.

Videogames are now much more accepted and mainstream than they were in 2001. They make more big budget AAA titles and spend more money trying to appease more people. Once more, the amount of money PC game developers are making should have gone flying up. Instead they have gone from making billions to only making millions.

These are figures from the industry itself about their sales. They say nothing about piracy specifically, but they show quite clearly it's effects.

It doesn't matter if your one friend decids he's going to buy the game anyway, because all the evidence suggests that for every one who does that there millions more who don't, and it's killing the industry.

 

[Callate]

Without more information about why one product is pirated and another is not, how the by-through rate on pirated software compares to that of software that isn't as heavily pirated, or what that "contribution" of the alleged pirates actually means ("Oh, sure, they don't pay for video games, movies, or software- but they buy tons of chocolate!") I find it hard to feel I can make much of a comment on the policy as stated.

What I _do_ know is that there's an inherent flaw to the "it just means advertising for future products" line of reasoning: without a revenue stream connecting First Product to Second Product to Third Product, for many developers (especially smaller ones and independents), there is no Second Product.

A lot of the U.S.'s proposed changes to IP law are heavy-handed and thoughtless, as are the copyright laws we live under in the digital age. But there's got to be some kind of middle ground where Big Brother doesn't spy on your hard drive at will and the creator who doesn't sell their soul to become part of Big Evil Conglomerate(tm) can still make a living.

 

[Frank_Sinatra_]

I saw this before, so here's my take for those who are confused:

Anti-piracy advocates claim that piracy impacts their bottom line. The Swiss government decided to test this. What they found was that about 1/3 of the sample surveyed had pirated media in the past, and they found that this 1/3, on average, contributed just as much, if not more, than the 2/3 who did not pirate (again, on average) on any given metric (Such as amount of cash spent and number of products purchased).

The conclusion was that since pirates don't appear to be spending any less money on CDs, games, movies, etc. as non-pirates, the argument that piracy saps money away from the entertainment industry doesn't hold up, and the Swiss government decided that their copyright laws do not have to be tightened in an effort to fight an unproven villain.

Well it looks like I don't have to post now.

To me, if you pirate a crappy game that you want to play just to see what it's like (E.G. a 50 Cent game), then it leaves the money you would have spent on that open to be spent on a game that you actually care about.

For me at least, you're more inclined to pirate stuff that you don't care about, and willing to spend the money on stuff you do care about.

 

[AnotherAvatar]

As both a musician, a writer, and a poverty stricken American I throughly believe that Piracy is excused for the simple fact that any artist would be happy to share their work with fans, especially those who wouldn't be able to experience it otherwise. It's mostly the money men who get butt hurt by piracy, the big corporations who's stacks of millions need to grow every month or they'll be violating some absurd law.

I wish people would start looking at Piracy more like charity.

 

[Therumancer]

And People say I'm The Lunatic.

Anyway, the biggest issue with what a lot of companies is not realizing that people aren't using the money they've "Saved" from not buying you're shitty yearly re-release of a certain game, to build some giant treasure vault under their bed.

Chances are, they're spending that money on important stuff, like, food, and bills, and when there's more spending money, chances are they'll spend that money instead on video games and music and whatever.

There's a small portion of those who pirate, who pirate excessively. Most of these people probably don't have the money for your £55 Yearly spewing of a series, does that mean they shouldn't have the game? Well, probably. but, if they can't buy it anyway, what are you losing?

Well, you're losing all that money you blew on copy protection that got cracked in 10 minutes.

Haha on the first comment.

Otherwise, I disagree with you because the basic issue here is that the Swiss are saying there is no piracy, because just grabbing whatever IP you want isn't illegal in their country. There is thus no incentive for anyone to even try and put together the money to buy a title, since their goverment tells them it's free and they should feel entitled to grab as much as they want.

I agree with you 100% about the greed of the media industry, but that doesn't mean stealing from them is right. Especially seeing as those lost sales also lead to less money coming into the economy of the host nation and being taxed, and so on.

Things like video games, movies, and music are entertainment products, NOT an entitlement, if someone is releasing them to the market in question people should either buy them or go without.

That said, I think the govermental motives here have nothing to do with the issue of piracy in of itself, but the simple fact that it doesn't benefit the Swiss to do anything about it.

As far as being a Lunatic goes, let me put things to you this way... without getting into any specifics about leverage, how do you make a country or culture stop doing something that it doesn't want to? You ask them and they say no, but due to a conflict of interests you need to make them stop.

The thing is that most people here will say "well, I guess we don't do anything then", but that's not usually a viable option, especially when the losses stack up and your interests begin to deteriate as a response.

In the end you might scream "lunatic" but how would you make the Swiss, or heck any nation in a similar situation, adopt a policy to benefit US business and creations that is going to wind up hurting them? Honestly I don't think you can find a *viable* answer or we would have already used it.

If I seem angry over the issue it's because piracy is stealing, and your looking at a nation saying pretty much "it's okay to steal, as long as it doesn't hurt us".

I mean your 100% correct, the media industry does need to lower their prices and adjust their ridiculous methods of thinking... and generally get into a far less corperate state of mind. Robbing them however does not help.

 

[Sightless Wisdom]

I agree with the Swedish government. The Escapist wouldn't like me to say much more, but I will say that everyone should take a look at Valve's stance regarding piracy in the games industry. Essentially Gabe thinks that if a product is being pirated more than it's being supported, the product isn't good enough. I'm not saying I agree with him, but Valve's methods are some of the best when it comes to pleasing both the customer and their own financial needs.

 

[DracoSuave]

so, what they are saying is that it's ok to steal things if you can't afford it?

I suspect not.

They probably understand that the developer doesn't exactly loose their data when someone steals it. It get's copied, and the developer doesn't know. What a great world it would be if I could steal a car by copy/pasting it.

I agree it's still stealing, just not in the classical sense.

It isn't losing the data that hurts the developer.

It's losing rights to distribute the data that hurts the developer. Losing the rights to something they own.

If you respect consumer property rights, you'd at least consider that. If you don't, then you don't respect consumer property rights. It's really simple.

 

[xdiesp]

See that? It's called actual freedom, not Freedom (C) as in fear of corporate rule. Let's be free to exchange whatever we want on the net, thank you switzerland.