[citation][nom]V8VENOM[/nom]Blaming some unidentified entity (the market) is going no where fast ... try it in a US court and see how far it gets you.$60 software vs. $30,000 kit car or a $200,000 original -- that's your justification for your criminal activity? Tell ya what, since you keep on the "kit car" analogy ... how about the software companies sends you a C++ compiler, 3D render tools, some graphics texture files, and 500,000 pages of instructions and you put the game together ... would that satisfy your Kit car approach to software?[/citation]
Of course blaming an entity won't work in court, but whether something is wrong or right has absolutely nothing to do with courts. Murder would still be bad if it was legal, and going 66 instead of 65 on a highway isn't a cardinal sin because it's illegal. Yes, by definition pirating games is "criminal activity". That doesn't mean there's anything morally wrong with it, or that there's anything good about it. That's a completely different issue.
As for sending you instructions, that's also beside the point. You only pay a very minimal premium to get a fully assembled kit car. Sure, you can pay a bit less and assemble it yourself, but in either case you are still paying basically nothing in comparison to full price, so it's the same situation as a pirated vs. a retail game.
I'm just trying to make a parallel between the two things. The point is that the reason kit cars exist is the exact same reason pirated games exist. The market system just isn't compatible with that type of product. Buying a kit car instead of a real one is the same, morally, as pirating a game. You may feel that it's wrong to pirate a game, because you're getting something someone else had to pay for for much less. But you have to feel the same way about kit cars then, because it's the same issue. You can hate pirates all you want, but you have to realize that piracy (or, more accurately, free-riding), is an inherent aspect of human nature. It's why communism doesn't work, and it's also why you can't sell things that cost nothing to produce. Blaming individuals for the broken system isn't going to get you anywhere. If the government started charging people for air, you wouldn't go around arresting people who took a breath without paying for it, you'd work to change the system so that it wasn't broken in the first place. You need to focus on the source problem, not it's symptoms.
(I realize the air analogy isn't the greatest, as when you take a breath you are technically taking something that could have been used by someone else, unlike with piracy, so it would actually be stealing to breath without a license in that scenario, but I think you get the point.)
Admittedly, the system isn't going to change anytime soon either, but I don't expect it to change. I'm just sick of hearing people complain about pirates while completely ignoring the root of the problem, which is far worse than a few people not paying for something.
And, because I figure you are dismissing me as a thieving lunatic anyway, I guess I should point out that I don't actually pirate games myself. I don't like the idea of buying a kit car, because I feel that you lose the "special something" you get from buying a real one. I don't pirate games for basically the same reason. I like having a "real" copy, preferably an actual physical copy instead of a digital one, and I would like to be supporting the developers. Now, don't get me wrong, I know I'm not actually supporting anyone but publishers and the store owners by buying retail, but just because I hate the way the current system works doesn't mean I want it to completely collapse before it gets fixed. I'd rather have the completely broken system we have now than no system at all. But I completely understand why some people pirate games, and I don't blame them for it one bit.
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