[spooky69]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

However, the very idea that "pirates are part of a business model" is the laughable part. Stealing is never part of a business model... it is the systematic attack of the business model. A business model is about developing a product, building a store, and finding ways to make it profitable for you to sell it. Piracy is the person who breaks the window of the store and takes what he wants, regardless of the intent of the business model. That person isn't encouraging people to go buy at your store. In fact, he's more likely driving away every legitimate buyer, who now doesn't trust the integrity or safety of that store, and attracting only more pirates looking to loot through the broken window.

Saying that pirates are not part of a business model is absolutely incorrect, and it reflects an logical flaw that I tried to highlight for you in the other piracy thread: the group of paying users and the group of pirates are in no way mutually exclusive. There are plenty of people who pirate media as a means of looking for things to spend their money on. You're in a tough position in that it's hard to offer something to entice pirates to spend their money since you can't offer them a piece of physical media, but if you're going to completely ignore the pirates then they're a lot more likely to ignore you.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

The business of trying to legitimize piracy by claiming that steps taken against it will only result in the erosion of the Constitution and Bill of Rights as Big Brother jackboots over us all is disingenuous, illogical, and already proven to be historically inaccurate. Laws to control what people can and cannot do with their owned property, and limiting their access to public and private resources, have been passed over and over, and we're no more sweating under the hot breath of Big Brother now than we were a hundred years ago.

That's not what I'm arguing at all. The only thing I said that was in any way related to the attitude you are describing is when I said that "I'm actually in favor of implementing as much security into the processing of internet traffic as possible as long as it doesn't infringe on an individual's rights." I understand that you don't like pirates but erroneously characterizing them all as paranoid idiots is further reflective of an attitude that is going to lose you money, which is the us vs. them approach to dealing with pirates. I'm not asking you to unlock the doors and come on in, but you need to develop a more realistic attitude about the type of people you're dealing with and recognize that you're dealing with somebody who's not only showing a marked interest in your product, but has sought it out and will probably distribute it to somebody else (albeit at a potential loss of income for you, but there's a huge amount of potential here that you seem willing to ignore because you don't like the people involved).
On the big brother thing again, I do agree that it's a somewhat silly attitude and even threw a small jab at somebody in the other piracy thread for using 1984 as an example in a discussion about public domain. On the other hand, if it weren't for the Chicken Littles, the sky might actually fall, so I'm always grateful for the paranoid idiots out there.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Storeowners accept the existence of looters. That's why they buy shatterproof glass and put bars on the windows and locks on their door. They do what they can to stop looters, catch them, and have them thrown in jail. And when they decide they are losing too much from looters, they close their shop, denying looters their product, and they move to a location where looters do not harass them. If they can't find such a place, they go out of business. And nobody gets their product. Nobody.

I haven't seen you yet acknowledge a fundamental point about digital piracy as compared to traditional theft, which is that each "theft" doesn't necessarily represent a loss of income for the seller since it's more than likely that the person would never have spent their money on that product anyway and downloaded it mostly because of the convenience of doing so. Obviously, in a larger sample of people who pirate, there are definitely going to be some people who would have bought the product and choose not to, but the only place where you're losing sales is from a very specific group of people who will buy a certain type of media, but only if they can't obtain it illegally. That group is going to make up a pretty small percentage of pirates and a much smaller percentage of the overall population. A much, much larger contingent within the pirates is the people who use piracy as a way to find new media, and view it as a "try before you buy" type of deal. This group is going to be very active in purchasing legal versions of products that they've already pirated, and having that person obtain a pirated copy of a product you can sell them is a significant business lead.

That's why saying that pirates are part of a business model is far from laughable.

Please don't mistake me saying this for arguing that piracy is somehow more acceptable because its negative financial impact might be smaller than expected. Rather, the point I'm trying to make, sincerely for your benefit, is that the majority of transfers of pirated material actually have the effect of bringing increased awareness of a product to an interested individual, and this will often have the effect of turning somebody who had a very low chance of buying a product without that contact into somebody who is now much more likely to spend their money on it legally if given the right incentive. Like I said, e-books are somewhat unique in that it's very difficult to offer that extra incentive to the pirate, but if you can do that then you'll be tapping into a very large user base.

I fully encourage any seller to take whatever steps they find necessary to protect their product, but as long as piracy of that product exists, it'd be very unwise to forget that piracy will always involve distribution to individuals willing to spend their money through legitimate channels.