KingsGambit
Caldari Knights
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Posted - 2009.04.23 11:11:00 -
[1]
 Originally by: masternerdguy
Ok would you pirate these...(They step up the price scale to see just where the line is)
1 thru 10 - Yes
Although I realise it is naughty, it doesn't particularly bother me. I still pay for a lot of music, movies, books and games I consider worth buying. In addition, I'll buy when I specifically want a physical copy or for a gift, for example. If I were to use a software program for something 'official' like in business, I would buy it legitimately without hesitation, but for playing about with at home, I'm not spending several hundreds on photoshop. Even when I do buy legitimate games, I still use cracks to avoid the need to use my DVD but use my genuine key.
IMO, the figures industries usually quote, such as "x millions in lost revenues due to piracy" is mostly rubbish. That is the amount they would have made had that many copies been purchased instead of pirated, but there is no way to know how many would have been bought had it been impossible to get for free. For example, I download a song, it hasn't actually cost the industry a single cent and I would never have bought it even if I couldn't get it for free. I pay for what I consider worth buying, I download when I can't find/buy something, when I can download before official release (and buy later) or when I wouldn't have bought. Some stuff is so bad I won't even download it, free or otherwise.
There is also a difference in downloading and taking a physical copy from a store/someone else. In the latter case, the item has a physical value and the original owner is being deprived of it. In the former, noone is being deprived of anything of worth whatsoever (except perhaps arguably the potential lost sale, see point above). If companies didn't charge exorbitant prices (in many cases well above what the product is really worth) for many products, piracy wouldn't be so widespread.
In pacific rim and many middle eastern countries for example, piracy is actually the norm. In Bahrain for example, the poor immigrant workers make approx $200 per month. A genuine DVD costs $20. That is 10% of their monthly income, the equivalent of us paying $150 for a movie. That same money will feed their families for days, so obviously they don't buy the films. Now pirates sell those same films (in many places, with actual stores in shopping malls) for $2...suddenly it's affordable and they sell plenty of copies. Big companies like Microsoft actually realise there's little to be done to prevent this however.
It's down to economy and affordability. And in the Internet age, there's no excuse for charging crazy prices when things cost so little to distribute, knowing they can be had for free illegally. Value is not what the creator perceives it to be, but the customer, and this may not reflect the item's worth, or its price.
Worth - The actual, material value of a good or service
Value - What we consider or perceive something to be worth
Price - The amount being asked for a good or service
A downloaded file is worth nothing whatsoever, whereas a store purchased product has a matieral worth for the physical product and the sales/support service the store provides. The value of an item is what we consider it to be. I consider that it is worth paying ú8 to see X-Men: Origins in the cinema, but that the new Crank movie is not, thus I will pay the asking price for the former, but not for the latter. I wouldn't pay ú1 for the latter actually. IMO where piracy crosses the line is when people make money from someone elses IP as I believe that that money should rightly go to the owner/creator, as bad as stealing, albeit not the same thing. Obviously this isn't the same as being an authorised reseller.
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