Quote:
Originally Posted by PKFFW
I agree the way publishing companies are currently going about business encourages people to go underground but they do not force them to. One always has the option of simply not purchasing the item if they think it too expensive, aren't happy with the content, have problems with DRM or have any other problem with it.
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If GM doesn't sell any cars in my country, but Ford does, GM also forces me to buy from Ford.
If the government forces you to go to a drug dealer to get your marijuana, and you like smoking marijuana and think there is nothing wrong with it, contrary to the govt's opinion, you will.
Similarly here, they are forcing people to go to the "competition"; while it's all well and good that that competition isn't legally offering those titles matters little.
Black markets spring up in times of war, prohibition, trade barriers, etc.
I'm not talking about
forcing to want, I'm talking about
forcing to go to. Sure, teens probably overdo it slightly more than others, but that doesn't meant that they're always being overly 'greedy'. Nobody forces you to
want electricity either, after all. We just
consider it necessary, as opposed to people living in the Sahara, or in Amish country.
While you could try to prosecute everyone just like the US is already doing to people doing marijuana, I think I can safely say that this doesn't work. Southeast Asia is rife with copied software just because the prices companies charge for their products are way out of the league of the people living there, not because
they're all criminals (convenient though that may sound). Their demand for that software, however, is still legitimate, and will not go away just because it's not being sold to them at their idea of a right price.
In the west, people are supposed to buy stuff because we're all assumed to be really, really rich. And if we aren't, we should know when to stop asking for stuff.
What makes us so different?