Piracy II

Welcome back to your irregular programming!  Thanks to everyone who visited my page recently and commented on experiences, or sent me PMs, shouts or Twitter messages - the support is very welcome, and I'm glad you guys are enjoying the posts. :)  Apologies to anyone who wanted a new post over the weekend: I have a track record of burning my creativity out when I go on writing sprees.  I kind of want to aim for a settled groove of writing regularly, but not too often.  So I figured that several posts during the working week would be sufficient, and weekends are left free for other stuff.

Anyway.  Today I was reading around on gDNA and perusing some of the comments people sent, and thought I'd post follow-ups to some of my previous experiences - for clarification, or just to add some more notes.  First up today is an addendum to the Piracy post.  I had someone take issue with what I said in that post and my accompanying comments on the forum thread that started it all off, and though I don't wish to enter into a full-blown argument about it (the post merely allowed me to state my thoughts; it was not specifically inviting rebuttal), there are some further points I wanted to make.

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My aversion to software piracy is based primarily on three things (that I can think of at the moment).

ETHICS & MORALITY

I feel it is morally wrong to pirate something.  My arguments to support this assertion revolve mostly around the desire to give people the credit they are due, and to not shortchange their work.  As a person who has had various creative works stolen/misrepresented/not paid for in the past, I am vehemently opposed to people who think they should be able to take things for free and not pay the person who went to the effort of making it.

If I were to make a sculpture, I wouldn't want people "trying it out" - I'd want them to make up their mind in the store, and then either buy the damn thing, or not.  If I took a digital photograph and made a print of it that I wanted to sell, I would not want people taking digital copies of the file and using it without my permission or without paying me (this being a situation I have been in on numerous occasions, with varying results).

There are principles here - principles that so many pro-piracy gamers would rather ignore because they think it's more convenient to do so.

I also have a moral objection to people who commit crimes because they are impatient.  So the arguments for piracy often go like this: "I don't have enough money, so I'll pirate it."  Or, "It's not coming out in [my country] until December, so I'll pirate it [in October]."  When did people completely lose sight of patience?  When did we begin to think it acceptable to jump the queue just because we wanted something sooner than we could legally have it?  "I want to be rich, but becoming a successful businessman will take years.  So I'll rob a bank now, and then do the hard work later."  No matter the situation in which you try to use that argument, it doesn't make sense.  Why is it okay to do this with digital products that almost always have a physical counterpart, and yet not with anything else?

In a way, all of the above amounts to this: far too often, people twist logic to suit their own, impatient, greedy, selfish means.  Learn to accept your limitations - if others are more creative than you, don't steal their work.  If you don't have money right now, exercise a bit of self-control and save up.  If you want anything so much that you'd consider stealing it, it really is 'worth the wait'.

MONETARY LOSS

I believe that piracy severely undermines a studio's ability to progress in a financial sense, as - either from 100% lost sales, using DRM, or lowering the price of legitimate games, they often lose a lot of revenue that they desperately need to either finance current projects, or solidify a 'successful' reputation (in order to attract future contracts).

The first issue is that they might lose revenue altogether from people who pirate the game and never buy it.  But even if a person was to pirate a game and THEN buy it at some later stage - the second issue is the delay.  Time moves on for all of us, and for a game studio, the time between you pirating a game and you slapping down money on a counter for it (multiplied by however many 'pirates with good intentions and no patience' there are in the world) is time during which they are not earning revenue from you.  If enough people do that, a studio goes down.  If I got a thousand people to buy Titan Quest today, it would not fix the fact that Iron Lore had to close down because people didn't buy the game while they were still open.

And the third issue is that even if a person pirates a game and buys it later, the period of time between them pirating it and them buying it still provisionally marks them as a criminal, as per the next point...

ILLEGALITY

This, I realise, is only a black & white affair in certain countries - in other countries such as Russia, things aren't quite so clear.  But I speak from the perspective of being an Australian gamer.  Here, at least, piracy is illegal.  There is no 'but', there is no 'maybe' - it is the law.  I do not believe in, for example, an American gamer arguing that the law has many grey areas in Russia, because hey - you're not in Russia, are you?  I could make a case for the ethic soundness (or lack thereof) of any one of a million issues that apply in other countries, but I would ultimately be making a hollow argument because my point is about piracy as I see it - so to make my point effectively, I would have to stick with what applies to me.

Thus, Australian laws for Australian gamers.  American laws for American gamers.  Russian laws for Russian gamers.  Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.  If it doesn't apply to the facts behind your stance, don't argue it.

Now, to those who say that the legality of piracy doesn't matter, I can only scratch my head at you in total bewilderment.  It's a crime for most of us (country withstanding), yet "that's not got anything to do with the real piracy discussion at all"?  HOW, pray tell, is it not relevant?

Argue any issue - piracy, slavery, freedom of speech, WHATEVER - without recognising the relevance and important of all of its attendant sub-issues, and you succeed only in proving yourself shortsighted, arrogant and ignorant, at best; or at worst, a complete fool.  I am willing to be thought ignorant if there are any other sub-issues of the software piracy debate that I haven't considered, but in no fantastical world of delusion would I ever neglect to consider its legality.

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This issue, without fail, raises my blood pressure: mostly because it's composed of arguments based on common sense, and the majority of people these days seem to lack common sense altogether.  I need to take a break, but I'll be back later to post a follow-up to the Games & Girls post.