I am 100% down for sailing the high seas. But let’s not sugarcoat it, this analogy is always been kind of crap.
Somebody went to your mailbox took out your paycheck, made a copy of it, put the original back in your box, went to the bank and cashed it.
Theft still took place. You’re probably still getting paid. Maybe it got taken up by insurance and everyone’s premium goes up a tiny fraction, maybe it got taken up by the bank or by your business.
It’s still an incomplete analogy but it’s a little bit closer.
That’s not to say that the vast majority of piracy isn’t people who wouldn’t pay anyway. And back in the day, you certainly got more visibility in your games from people who were pirating.
But now that advertising is on its toes and steam exists, I won’t think they’re getting any serious benefit from piracy and I don’t think that they’re not losing At least modest numbers of sales.
Stealing money from your account is theft, it’s not still there afterwards.
The concept I think you might’ve been looking for is opportunity cost in that pirating deprives an artist of potential sales. Which is a fair point, but it is still not the same as stealing since it does not deprive the artists of their original copy.
It’s also all done in the context of a system that is not run by artists and does not primarily benefit artists, but is instead run by and benefits middlemen.
It is common for artists to not own their own work. Taylor Swift bought back her own work, Michael Jackson bought Paul McCartney’s work from the record company (which annoyed Paul because he would have done it otherwise).
I am 100% down for sailing the high seas. But let’s not sugarcoat it, this analogy is always been kind of crap.
Somebody went to your mailbox took out your paycheck, made a copy of it, put the original back in your box, went to the bank and cashed it.
Theft still took place. You’re probably still getting paid. Maybe it got taken up by insurance and everyone’s premium goes up a tiny fraction, maybe it got taken up by the bank or by your business.
It’s still an incomplete analogy but it’s a little bit closer.
That’s not to say that the vast majority of piracy isn’t people who wouldn’t pay anyway. And back in the day, you certainly got more visibility in your games from people who were pirating.
But now that advertising is on its toes and steam exists, I won’t think they’re getting any serious benefit from piracy and I don’t think that they’re not losing At least modest numbers of sales.
This is a horseshit analogy.
Stealing money from your account is theft, it’s not still there afterwards.
The concept I think you might’ve been looking for is opportunity cost in that pirating deprives an artist of potential sales. Which is a fair point, but it is still not the same as stealing since it does not deprive the artists of their original copy.
It’s also all done in the context of a system that is not run by artists and does not primarily benefit artists, but is instead run by and benefits middlemen.
The artist has ownership rights to all copies, not just the original; it’s literally in the word “copyright”.
It is common for artists to not own their own work. Taylor Swift bought back her own work, Michael Jackson bought Paul McCartney’s work from the record company (which annoyed Paul because he would have done it otherwise).