Cool article. I don't think I would change or add anything there, but I have some thoughts.
To make this analysis more rigorous, you could express a utility function in terms of the different dimensions ("currencies" here) and assume that most people are generally making choices that maximize their expected utility. (Quick aside: maybe it's controversial, but personally, I think it's okay to assume that most people are acting rationally most of the time. If they seem to be acting irrationally, a reasonable first hypothesis is that you're not modeling their utility correctly.)
> Those who reject the notion of copyright altogether would likely value $I = 0, though even in this case, thinking of it instead as "the risk one takes of getting in trouble with the law" still raises $I to some non-zero value.
I think risk is actually its own thing and if you really want to assess it, it becomes pretty fundamental. Like the legal risk of pirating something means there's some probability of losing a lot more money and time, plus maybe social standing (yet another currency, honestly). However, my impression is that currently the legal risk for a consumer pirating a game for personal use just isn't very high, so it wouldn't be worth complicating the discussion with all of that.
To make this analysis more rigorous, you could express a utility function in terms of the different dimensions ("currencies" here) and assume that most people are generally making choices that maximize their expected utility. (Quick aside: maybe it's controversial, but personally, I think it's okay to assume that most people are acting rationally most of the time. If they seem to be acting irrationally, a reasonable first hypothesis is that you're not modeling their utility correctly.)
> Those who reject the notion of copyright altogether would likely value $I = 0, though even in this case, thinking of it instead as "the risk one takes of getting in trouble with the law" still raises $I to some non-zero value.
I think risk is actually its own thing and if you really want to assess it, it becomes pretty fundamental. Like the legal risk of pirating something means there's some probability of losing a lot more money and time, plus maybe social standing (yet another currency, honestly). However, my impression is that currently the legal risk for a consumer pirating a game for personal use just isn't very high, so it wouldn't be worth complicating the discussion with all of that.