Published on February 9th, 2010.
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The situations placed in this article are all hypothetical and are dramatized for the sake of good writing. Vael has never pirated anything in the world ever.

Depending on who you talk to, the plague of the Internet is not the word opinion, but rather, piracy. Piracy has an awful rhap about it, with some particularly zealous people even going as far as to say it's a large factor of our latest recession. (RIP Hollywood Video, long live Red Box) I'm writing to give you the right way to think.

Copying vs. Stealing

The most common erroneous statement made against piracy is that you are in fact stealing from a company when you pirate something. This is kind of true. The only time that piracy is stealing is when you are denying the potential profits of the company. For example, let's say you're going to buy a DVD of a movie that you saw in the theater. You're going to spend $10 on it. You then reason, "hum... I really did enjoy that movie, but I think I'll just pirate it instead". That is stealing - a denial of profits, even on digital content. Wanting to try out an album of a band first before buying it, however, is completely reasonable. Many bands these days will release their albums online fully streaming, and then if you like it, you buy a copy for your iPod/library. This is how it should have been, but such technology was not always available. I believe it is the notion that you just buy something and ignore it if you don't like it, that has made piracy so prominent.

If you did not intend to buy something, and you pirate it, that only opens to the door to you buying 'the real thing'. Game companies are learning that demos are necessary today to compete with piracy. Though it is not always the case, or even mostly, some people do pirate games as a trial. Morally speaking, you should eventually make an effort to support whatever you enjoy, by buying the respective product.

Piracy & Gaming

A big issue with the PC gaming scene is, #1, piracy. Piracy takes the blame for 'console ports' - developing for gaming consoles and then porting it over to the PC - because they fear more revenue will come from the consoles. (this is unfortunately true, with PCs ruling only their main purchase advantage: digital downloads) Piracy is also the reasoning for DRM, which has been around since the days of floppies. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management and it is a protocol for protection against the big bad crackers/hackers/code jackers. As such, it is almost always trumped within a matter of days by said hackers. Then, everyone who wants to, can play the game for free.

Piracy & Music

Piracy is the best thing to happen to music itself since compact discs. And like compact discs, piracy acts as merely another form of technological evolution. The reason record companies were whining about album sales is because they were not evolving along with it. Instead they grasped onto all they had left: the 'advantage' of having a hard copy of the album in your hands. Vintage, absolutely, but not so many consumers agree.

If I hadn't pirated Unexpect, I wouldn't have gone to their concert and bought a shirt. (as well as a ticket) I would not have heard them mentioned as avant-garde and would not have found out about other avant-garde bands, which is a pretty big deal when the scene as a whole has impacted my personality and will forever. As I said previously, if you love something, buy it. The least I could do was purchase Unexpect's album, even after getting a silly ol' shirt and a ticket.

A final thought on the music aspect of piracy is going back to why I feel you should be making it in the first place: because you love it. Metallica got all pissy about their precious album sales, and to the whole metal community, they just looked like big spoiled rockstars. When they first started jamming in their basement/garage, do you think they said, "Wow that sounds like it can make a lot of money!" or "Wow, that sounds awesome!"? I believe making money from art is a wonderful thing - doing what you love, being creative about it, and making money is absolutely ideal. Just don't forget why you first picked up your instrument. (unless it was to make money, you horrible, horrible scoundrel)

Piracy & Software

Software like Adobe Photoshop and Flash are what made the internet what it is today. As of this writing, Adobe Photoshop itself off the Adobe site goes for $999. Flash itself goes for $499. Economically speaking, Photoshop is not as great as paint.net or Gimp. Flash may be the best animation program, but the price tag of $500 is truly obnoxious. It is in these cases where I feel piracy is not only wholely justified, but the best option. Personally, I don't animate things anymore, and I just use Gimp (which is, to mention, more light-weight) for all my photoshopping needs.

Why Piracy Wins

The problem with piracy is that companies can't find a way to be better than it. As a pirate, in terms of gaming, you will sacrifice (in most cases) online play, future patches/additional content, and any services related to the game that require validation. Considering you may have just saved yourself $50, most pirates are happy to take what they can get. In terms of music, there's a whole world of information, new ideas, and utter joy you can open yourself up to by downloading whole discographies. People brag about their twelve-gig collections (of generic, awful electronica, no doubt) which can, ultimately, add up to a whole lot of money saved by piracy. Software, especially in the case of something such as a video converter, is simply not worth spending $20 on when you only need it for one or two occasions in a long span of time.

So you see people are usually willing to put forth the effort of finding a keygen for the software they need, and deal with whatever lack of features they cannot access, as long as they can save money. This only becomes more relevant when poor economic conditions are present, or at least their personal finances are looking grim.

Conclusion

Piracy built up the 'net. It's made bands/games just that much more popular. If you truly enjoy something and it's fairly priced, buy it. You still need to make the world go 'round. In my experience, the younger/poorer you are, the more likely you are to pirate. Many kids cannot identify with actually respecting something enough to buy it, and obviously if you don't have the money to buy something, our instant-entertainment conditioning tells us to just copy the lesser version of the game. Finally I want to stress that piracy is only stealing when you deny the potential profits of a medium that you enjoy.

Passing the rum and battening the hatches,
Vael Victus