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Study Claims $41.5 Billion In Portable Game Piracy Losses Over Five Years
Gamasutra reports that Japan's Computer Entertainment Suppliers Association conducted a study to estimate the total amount of money lost to piracy on portable game consoles. The figure they arrived at? $41.5 billion from 2004 to 2009. Quoting:
"CESA checked the download counts for the top 20 Japanese games at what it considers the top 114 piracy sites, recording those figures from 2004 to 2009. After calculating the total for handheld piracy in Japan with that method, the groups multiplied that number by four to reach the worldwide amount, presuming that Japan makes up 25 percent of the world's software market. CESA and Baba Lab did not take into account other popular distribution methods for pirated games like peer-to-peer sharing, so the groups admit that the actual figures for DS and PSP software piracy could be much higher than the ¥3.816 trillion amount the study found."
it supposes that the Law of Demand does not apply.
Another fallacy of logic. Actually, it PROVES the law of demand - otherwise there would be no demand for pirated games/applications. None. Zero. Just because something is stolen does not in any way, shape, or form mean the law of demand is inapplicable. The exact opposite is true.
Furthermore, every pirated copy not only validates the product is priced too low (demand is after all high) but that the value of the product has been been diluted and therefore damaged. So not only does stealing hurt the original manufacturer in loss of sales, but it also hurts the value of the product itself. Which of course, also mandates continued high pricing to offset both the loss of revenue and market damages.
Its easy to see why such draconian measures are taken at every opportunity. No doubt about it - pirates are stealing. Pirates are thieves. Almost without fail, every complaint pirates use to justify their theft actually exists preciously because so many pirates so rampantly justify theft. In other words, pirates blame corporations for their own actions and ineptitude.
Using corrected numbers, 2 - 6 BILLION dollars is still a shit load of money by any measure. Stop making it sound like its some trivial number which isn't worth discussion. Even divided by 100 companies that's a significant loss of revenue and market value directly traceable to thieves. Hell, even divided by 1000 companies, that's a shit load of lost revenue.
No, that's idiot logic employed by thieves. The fact that someone wants it means it has a non-zero value. Thusly blowing a huge hole in your entire bullshit theory. The economic works exactly as I said. The simple fact that pirates want something immediately assigns value to it.
If a pirate attributed something of worth as having no value, they wouldn't want it. Since both the market and pirates attribute a value to something completely establishes a non-zero value.
Funny how pirates only listen to a tiny, tiny portion of BASIC economics which bolster their thieving ways but completely ignore the whole of economics which directly implicates them as thieves.
I sure wish pirates would stop stealing and making shit up to justify their theft at every turn. Everyone pays for their actions and lies.