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Free Games As a Solution To Game Piracy
christ, jesus H writes "PC gaming may not be dying, but it is in a state of flux. We're seeing developers and publishers blaming piracy for all the ills of PC gaming, but attempts to rein in pirates with the help of DRM only annoys and mobilizes the legitimate customers of your games. The solution? According to David Perry of Shiny Games, PC games are going to be free." (And if anyone has a favorite replacement term for "piracy," in the context of electronic copyright violation, please suggest it below.)
Quoth Spun:
"It's not stealing as copying does not deprive the original owner of anything."
Why do people keep making this asinine argument? Because they feel they need to justify their THEFT of other people's work.
When I make a program, be it a game or utility or whatever, I am making an investment of my time believing that I can sell a certain number of copies of the finished program if it performs well at the desired function. I am allocating units of my work against future sales of the program. I can choose to make a shoddy program and only invest a little time, or I can choose to hopefully make a great program that will attract a much larger customer base and invest a lot of time. There is a fixed (not infinite) market for a given program. If you steal a copy of the program, you are utilizing the fruits of my labour without compensating me for it. You have STOLEN some of my time, and deprived me of income that I should have recieved for creating a program that you have found usefull.
Look at it another way; the cost to create a program is amortized over a certain number of copies. If I write a program for only one customer, that copy will be very expensive. If that customer uses it, but decides not to pay me, are they depriving me of income? Of course! What if a program is written for a group of four customers? The price to each will be less, but if one of the four decides to use it without paying me anything, they are still depriving me of income. Just because a program is given a wider distribution that 1 or 4 or 100, and has a correspondingly lower price, it does NOT mean that you are not depriving me of income when you use a copy without compensating me for it!
I know that it is legally "copyright infringement", but morally, it is THEFT.
It's just like anything else for sale in our world; if you think the price it too high, fine, don't buy it. Just because you think you can steal it without getting caught and you attempt some specious argument to absolve yourself doesn't make it right.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
The whole try-before-you-buy excuse is a very valid one IMHO.
If it's valid, it's no longer an excuse.