It seems we hear all of the time about some media developer or publisher complaining about piracy. The statements range from barely justified to completely absurd where the latter is far more frequent. From my personal perspective, it seems that the majority of the time these developers are simply using "piracy" as an excuse to avoid the real issues that affect the sales of their products. These days, if you make a poor product or are too lazy to port your product to certain devices, you can hide this fact by blaming piracy.

I obviously take issue with this but I go even further to ask why piracy has such a bad reputation in the first place. I can easily make the argument that piracy potentially helps the various media industries. In order to debunk the arguments made by these people, we must first look at the claims as to why piracy is supposedly bad and if these statements have any factual basis. Let's make a short list. Piracy is bad because:

1: It is theft and theft is immoral.

2: It leads to many lost sales that would have otherwise been made.

3: The lost sales deter developers from developing on a broader range of devices, affect the development of future media, and can potentially cause the developer to go out of business entirely.

4: It forces extra expenses to be focused on anti-piracy measures such as DRM.







It is theft and theft is immoral.

Theft is certainly immoral but is piracy theft? This question is complicated because it doesn't apply to the traditional idea of theft and opinions on what exactly constitutes legitimate private property varies greatly. The original copy is not removed. The owner is not deprived of anything. The only victim is theoretical. It's hard for anyone to say one way or the other without some detailed thought and reasoning. I could probably write an entire book on this question alone. However, I can sum up the focus of my point by applying it to the physical world.

Let's assume that we have the power to make a copy of a physical product with relatively little cost and minimal effort in a similar fashion to how we "pirate" digital media. Let's say someone invents a very cheap duplication device. I might have the ability to make a copy of my friend's laptop or bicycle by borrowing it and using my duplication device. The original owner of the product is not deprived of his product. The bicycle and laptop manufacturers then claim I "stole" their product. Are they correct?

Here's another one. Let's travel back in time to the days before digital technology and cheap book manufacturing. I borrow a book from a friend. I enjoy this book so much but have no ability to purchase my own and my friend wants me to return this book soon. I decide to manually copy the contents of the book onto my own parchment. Did I steal anything from anyone? If yes, why is it theft and what exactly did I steal?

If I’m a local cover band at a local bar am I stealing? If someone draws a picture on a paper and I can look at that pictures and draw an exact duplicate am I stealing? These examples are the physical equivalent of what a person does when he downloads copyrighted materials illegally. If you have an extreme and very broad sense of private property, you can make the assertion that “piracy” is theft. If you are like myself or the developer of Minecraft, you probably have a difficult time calling it theft.

There's one last thing I'd like to add. Is there any moral justification for piracy? What if a product I want has been discontinued? I modded my Sega Saturn in order to play Panzer Dragoon Saga and Dragon Force. Did I steal these games? If so, who did I steal from? How could I have supported the developers since they are discontinued? What if there is no way for you to be able to determine whether or not purchasing the product is justified? PC games have no rental service and the demos are few and far between. Sometimes even when there are demos they do a poor job. I have personally "pirated" many games simply to determine whether or not I wanted to purchase them. I did this for many games in the past. I purchased every one of those when I had the funds. Was this still theft and still immoral even though the "piracy" led to additional revenue for the industry?




I hate the word piracy. A word used to describe people who murder, rape, and pillage should not be equated with downloading a piece of data off of the internet.



It leads to many lost sales that would have otherwise been made.

Does "piracy" lead to lost sales? Many developers and publishers seem to think so. In fact, some go so far as to assert that every pirated copy is a lost sale. Anyone with half of a brain knows this is completely absurd. It's obvious that many of the people illegally downloading media would not have purchased the media otherwise. The simple fact is, there are too many factors and too much unknown data to be able to determine whether or not piracy leads to lost sales.

I'll mention some of the main determining factors. The first has already been mentioned. Assuming piracy did not exist, how many people would have purchased the product that didn't in reality? Logic tells me that this number is probably a very low percentage. The second factor has also been mentioned. Some people illegally download material in order to determine whether it deserves a purchase. This leads to additional sales for the industry.

Another major factor is the positive side effect of free exposure which acts as a form of free advertisement. I grabbed the Deus Ex: Human Revolution leak before the release. After completing it, I immediately preordered my Augmented Edition copy. In addition, I was constantly informing my gaming friends about the game and telling them how great it was. This led to more legitimate purchases and even further exposure that would not have occurred had I not illegally downloaded this game. Eidos were even nice enough to let us discuss the leak on their forum! I have many similar experiences but that was the first that came to mind.

There are obviously many other factors but I'd say those three are some of the more important ones. The positive side effects of piracy can potentially cancel out the theoretical "lost sales" or even lead to more sales than would have occurred without piracy. Notch and Gabe Newell don't see "lost sales" but rather "potential customers". I think this is a proper business approach. In the end, it is impossible to know for sure if piracy helps or hurts sales overall.







The lost sales deter developers from developing on a broader range of devices, affect the development of future media, and can potentially cause the developer to go out of business entirely.

Every week or so some developer or publisher mentions some kind of nonsense about how excessive piracy is preventing them from developing for PC. We already know that it is impossible to determine the overall effect of piracy so this argument is false. The reality is that it is easier to blame piracy for all of the ills than to say, "Our games do not have the level of quality required to justify development on the PC. The risk is too high that people will not like our games so we have decided to develop exclusively for consoles where the user base is greater." To say this would be suicide for the games and possibly the company.

This argument also ignores the fact that piracy is absolutely rampant on the consoles and handhelds as well. The only current console that remains a slight exception to this is the PS3. I don't think I know anyone with a DS, PSP, Wii, or 360 that is not modded for playing copied games. The 360 and Wii don't even require hardware modifications.

Reality shows that if you make a good game that appeals to many people, it will sale. Like anything else with economics, it's all about supply and demand. If a developer makes something that I want badly enough, I will purchase it. There are endless examples of this. If a person or group decides to believe in scare tactics and this prevents them from developing quality media for any device, they do so at their own disadvantage.







It forces extra expenses to be focused on anti-piracy measures such as DRM.

DRM is a strategy that many developers and publishers use to counter piracy. The vast majority of gamers agree that DRM can only ever hurt the customer because the person downloading the product illegally doesn't encounter the DRM. At best, the DRM prevents the game from being cracked for a very short time. The companies that reward their customers with minimal (or zero) DRM and offer many benefits to purchasing the product instead of pirating receive their own rewards in exchange. Good Old Games and Steam are massively successful for their business models. The companies that incorporate a "guilty until proven innocent" attitude (ex: Ubisoft) towards their customers receive deserving criticism and lack of sales.

Some companies have done a great job at using their creativity in order to fight piracy. Others run to the government and lobby for draconian laws. It shouldn't be so obvious to see who is in the right and who is in the wrong. For examples of great attitudes towards piracy, check out Notch (Minecraft) and Gabe Newell (Half-Life, Left 4 Dead).

If a company decides to invest the resources into DRM, this is their own choice. There is no solid evidence that DRM diminishes piracy. The resources poured into this are based on either ignorance or blind hope. It doesn't matter what kind of DRM you have, your media will be cracked and illegally distributed if it is popular enough. The faster companies accept this and learn to deal with it instead of whining to shareholders, customers, and the government, the faster they can get back to making quality media and software.

Am I defending piracy? Not really. I simply know that it's an issue that is completely blown out of proportion and a very different viewpoint and approach for the industry, customers, and the government have to made in order to come up with a reasonable solution. I’ll end my rant here but I’d like to go into more detail about where piracy comes from and what companies can do in order to combat piracy without the use of government. Stay tuned for a future blog covering this topic. Thanks for reading!