As far as Piracy is concerned, piracy should be the least of most peoples worries now-a-days with the war in IRAQ, and world turmoil escalating. Piracy will be the last thing on your mind when the world is going to shit.
Next most gamers understand if they don't support good games with their $, there will be no sequels, even "pirates", i.e. normal people who get something for free and check it out, know this. Business types who complain about piracy shouldn't complain, period. With digital goods you can now legally have a kind of equitable socialism because the good is not scarce in anyway.
IMHO anyone who complains about piracy should think about what its like to be born in another country where a game costs more then half a months rent.
Some business people who complain about piracy are evil(tm). As a good that has no scarcity, someone can copyright it and make profits off it eternally without having to do anymore work, this is why corporations love to extend patent and intellectual property / Copyright lengths, in fact rights to profit on finite works should be finite, not indefinite. There's lots of rich people living off things that were made a long time ago simply because they are the legal owner of the "intellectual property", i.e. old songs from ages ago that still make their owners milions for doing nothing except owning someone *elses* work which took a finite work, in fact unlimited profitability on a non-scarce good is in fact a form of business piracy, they pirate way more time and money from workers beneath them to enrich themselves off a work who's worth in terms of time and labour was negligable.
I don't cry for the games industry... games have been getting lower and lower quality as time goes on, or they directly copy hit games because they cannot come up with fun games themselves. Galciv2 copies a lot of things from civilization 3 and 4 for example.
Anyways as far as I'm concerned as long as game developers make a decent enough profit, those that are poor should be allowed to pirate it. Capitalism is in no way perfect, IMHO 1 in 4 people in america earn less then 19,000 a year. Capitalism in a divided world is one of the most perfect worker exploiting systems ever devised.
Take illegal immigration in america, businesses love cheap workers. But illegal immigration lowers the majorities standards of living unless you are on the top of the economic pile, an immigrants only concern is survival so other people who are barely making it get screwed because they're willing to work for the lowest wages because they're desperate.
One of the reasons for war is to devestate other countries economies and make their people so desperate they will work just to survive, so markets in some of the most powerful countries in the world can benefit. When someone profits someone else is going poor, riches are just displaced, they are not created out of thin air.
GalCiv2 Forums
If you're into that sort of thing and get the opportunity to watch that episode sometime then well yer do... What's this topic about again? Pirating! Aaarr! And a bottle of Rum!
