> Even with all of that said, I support piracy. Information wants to be free, and games are made of information. No one has lost anything when a game is copied.
"Information wants to be free, and games are made of information" is a defense of piracy that has nothing whatsoever to do with the consequences of piracy. The argument is that copyright claims are morally invalid because they go against the nature of information as such.
This is used to make the claim that "no one has lost anything when a game is copied".
That claim is a bit of verbal trickery, and that's what my comment is complaining about. If a developer has a copy of a game on their hard drive, and after releasing the game, someone pirates it, the developer still has a copy of the game on their hard drive. This is one sense of "not having lost anything", and it's what ddevault understands to be the nature of information that underlies the moral argument I gave above.
But what that moral argument can not tell you is that "no one has lost anything" in the fairly conventional, pragmatic sense that one can "lose a job".
My comment is a theoretical example (or thought experiment) that highlights the difference in a way that makes clear how the words "no one has lost anything" are at least misleading, and potentially hurtful. That is why I begin with the words "suppose" (which is how philosophers often introduce thought experiments) and proceed to give a highly theoretical example about a indie dev studio which does not exist. The upshot is the philosophical point that people can "lose something" (a livelihood) without "losing anything" (a piece of intellectual property).
I have no idea whether, on the whole, piracy is good or bad for video games. Despite your apparent certainty, I do think the jury is still out on that point. But that is most emphatically not the point that I am making in my comment.
Your argument strikes me as tautological in that you've created a hypothetical sad situation and are arguing that because it is sad we should change our behavior.
I think it's probably worthwhile to think about if the situation could actually occur in our world.
Otherwise, why not construct the absurd thought experiment: what if the intern that got laid off won a bunch of money and didn't have to work? Piracy is obviously moral and great because the intern is now rich.
Obviously this wouldn't happen to most interns given how the world works (losing your job is bad). Thus it is a bad thought experiment.
Similarly, if having a game pirated leads to an increase in sales, this is a bad thought experiment.
ddevault:
> Even with all of that said, I support piracy. Information wants to be free, and games are made of information. No one has lost anything when a game is copied.
"Information wants to be free, and games are made of information" is a defense of piracy that has nothing whatsoever to do with the consequences of piracy. The argument is that copyright claims are morally invalid because they go against the nature of information as such.
This is used to make the claim that "no one has lost anything when a game is copied".
That claim is a bit of verbal trickery, and that's what my comment is complaining about. If a developer has a copy of a game on their hard drive, and after releasing the game, someone pirates it, the developer still has a copy of the game on their hard drive. This is one sense of "not having lost anything", and it's what ddevault understands to be the nature of information that underlies the moral argument I gave above.
But what that moral argument can not tell you is that "no one has lost anything" in the fairly conventional, pragmatic sense that one can "lose a job".
My comment is a theoretical example (or thought experiment) that highlights the difference in a way that makes clear how the words "no one has lost anything" are at least misleading, and potentially hurtful. That is why I begin with the words "suppose" (which is how philosophers often introduce thought experiments) and proceed to give a highly theoretical example about a indie dev studio which does not exist. The upshot is the philosophical point that people can "lose something" (a livelihood) without "losing anything" (a piece of intellectual property).
I have no idea whether, on the whole, piracy is good or bad for video games. Despite your apparent certainty, I do think the jury is still out on that point. But that is most emphatically not the point that I am making in my comment.