Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
No. Just no.
You don't even understand what stealing is.
Stealing is taking something without the owner's permission. If you think a product is too expensive, you just don't buy it. It is not stealing for a company to ask you to pay more for a product than you, personally, think it is worth.
It is stealing for you to take the product without paying.
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This post is dripping with delicious irony-sauce. Berating someone for getting the technical meaning of "stealing" wrong, and then applying a meaning that is no less correct buy helps advance your own personal position caused me to have a grin two-sizes too large for my face. Thank you for that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HansTWN
The ones you are talking about are not consumers. Consumers are people who are willing to pay for a product, they don't just take what doesn't belong to them because they can get away with it. And neither are those who claim to be willing to buy for a ridiculously low price that nobody can afford to sell at called consumers. The ones you are talking about will always take it for free and never buy, anyway. They really don't count. Honest people may think something is too expensive. Then they just stay away and get something else.
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Except, as has been pointed out many times, and in threads that you've participated in, recent studies have shown that pirates do in fact buy quite a bit of media even though it's evident that they know how to get it for free. Gabe Newell at Valve Software would certainly disagree with you as well and say that most pirates are merely under-served customers. Valve's profits in the Russian market (where piracy is rampant), would certainly seem to suggest that Gabe is correct on this one.
It's easy to demonize copyright infringers, but hyperbole doesn't make for a useful conversation.