I think our views have reached the "unagreeable point. In my opinion, once an entertainment product has been released to the public, the creator can no longer decide who can "get it" and who not. Because the artist doesn't really has any interest in deciding who should have it ot not, but he wants to make a living of his craft and that is possible with the current system we have.

That, of course, if the artist intented the product to have it released only to a selected few or limited audience in the first place. Like a love letter, a sex tape or a private concert specifically for a group of people that was choosen by the artist (entry fee doesn't count as "chosen", I mean something like crime/disaster victims (yeah, I know, but I can't come with something better).

Another problem is that some artists have fans that bought the music, but the artist doesn't want them to have it. (Like nazis listening to certain metal groups). How do we deal with them?

My point is, nobody is entitled. Neither the artist nor the pirate. Piracy simply is. And the faster we as a society (producers and consumers) adapt to this, acknowledge its benefits and be cautios of its real problems, the better everybody will be. I'm not denying that piracy might have some inherent dangers if it would go "unchecked" by moral standards, but this isn't happening and there is also no indication of it. Piracy and consumerism arent opposites, they are two sides of the same coin.

I don't think we are a million miles apart really - perhaps even just a matter of time scale. Perhaps I, as a consumer, am simply not quite ready to adapt.

I see your point, but I was not so much arguing about "who" can get it, more about ensuring that the producer is compensation in some form for their efforts by those who benefit from them. I admit that the current (old) system makes it difficult to disentangle those things.

I also tend to get hung up on the "if it is considered dishonest then don't do it" issue - particularly for something relatively trivial like entertainment.

I can conceive of no system which can do anything about that. Which is why DRM is so utterly pointless and wasteful.

Sounds fair.

Oh please. My argument is invalid? It's a hypothetical. You showed no evidence to make it invalid. It's no more invalid than anything you've posted so far. I agree that it would be silly to download a full game if you only needed a cracked .exe that was a few kilobytes big. I don't know that for sure though. I've never downloaded a full cracked game. The most I've ever done is download a no-cd .exe for a retail purchase. I've read before from other users who would know that sometimes it is not possible to download a cracked .exe so sometimes the only way to get the working game is to download the whole game.

I can play both of those games on a console and get the same experience with the vanilla game. How about those lost sales? Those should count. Something I have been thinking on lately is how many of my friends play on consoles now. I don't know a single real life friend that plays PC games anymore. They never were into PC games as much as I used to be, but most of them would buy PC games every now and then. Now I play consoles too for the newer titles. The PC games I play currently are either older games or indie games.

What would cause this? I don't know about my friends and family that used to play PC games every once in a while, but for me, it was DRM. Could be that if people pay for something, they want to own it. They don't want a useless disk with DRM on it.

I think it's pretty obvious that regional locks can cause lost sales too. That doesn't mean that a game still won't sell well where it's allowed, like you say, but it is still causing lost sales.

I'll answer your question first. Honestly, no I wouldn't be ashamed. If I could do this, I would also customize it in a way so it would be the best fit for me and represented me in some way. Ferrari would get my business for having a stellar reputation for things like using higher quality material than I can use, for putting together a car that doesn't break down, for having more efficient equipment so they can make a car more cheaply than I can, or for having other services that I want. They could also get my business because I don't want to print a car, maybe because I don't know how or because I just don't want to take the time unless it pays off.

I'll address your second question later.

If I own the rivalrous and tangible property, sure. I cannot define how I want other people to use their own property though. That's the main thing I wanted to point out with my post that you replied to. No one is stealing anything, they are using their own property to make a copy. If IP is anything, it is a restriction on personal property rights. Basically, I think of it as much the same thing as mercantilism.

It all sounds a lot like the right to make up restrictions if it makes money. If people want to make money, adjust your business model.

So we can agree that piracy is not at all like stealing property at least. It would be most beneficial if people would stop comparing it to piracy in these kinds of debates. If people want to argue about stealing ideas, that would be an improvement.

I still don't agree with you about stealing ideas though. How does someone steal an idea? I agree with Thomas Jefferson. I won't say that these monopolies have never been used for good, but, generally speaking, they cause more harm than good.

Your opinion may or may not be true, but your data points about Skyrim and BF3 in no way show whether DRM affects sales positively or negatively. All it shows is that a game can sell a lot of copies, even with DRM. There's nothing to show that it couldn't have sold more, less, or the same with no DRM.

The same goes for TW2, just because it didn't sell as well as BF3 (which is never going to happen in a million years for a variety of reasons, anyway) doesn't actually show whether the sales numbers they did have were positively or negatively affected by the lack of DRM (or not at all affected, I suppose).
WTF, no I wouldn't any more than I'd be ashamed to use anything else I'd made myself, in fact I'm damned PROUD to use things I've made myself. If you make a hammer, computer, laser clock, or anything else do you seriously think you come up with all of that from scratch? Or do you read online and modify existing designs to suit your needs.

Seriously, these attitudes people have about "owning" ideas are completely fucked and have to go.
You can't "steal" them as they are neither a secret nor protected under copyright. There's some weird and fucked up patents on some art design shit that can happen, but we can toss those out in this case because we're talking about 1984.

Nope. Hammer is one thing, it's a practical tool which is designed to be as functional as possible. A whole different thing would be someone re-writing an entire book and then signing himself as it's writer. These 'attitudes' people have about owning ideas is to protect creative minds who make something from a bit more wealthy minds who can simply steal and replicate that idea, without giving a single cent to whoever came up with it in the first place.

You keep talking about the specter of "the rich and powerful" stealing from the little guy. The content protection isn't primarily benefiting the little guy, it's benefiting the big guy and the big guy is constantly lobbying for even more of it. That alone should be enough to make you rethink said boogeyman.

I'm not saying the laws in place are good as they are, I'm saying that the general idea behind them is good. They should be changed, not thrown out of the window.

I never said that TW2 sold bad. It sold very well for a PC exclusive RPG. But I wanted to point out that it was pirated as heavy as DRMed/regional locked titles, so this whole idea "we pirate because of DRM" seems to be worthless for me ;).

I think the creativity you'll see if we throw them out will far outweigh what we'll see by merely improving the laws. If you're merely trying to make sure creators get fed and can afford an XBox and decent car, there's other ways to go about that (that help more than just content creators, btw, so we should be looking strongly into them). If you're trying to defend the dream of getting "JK Rowling" style rich, I really don't care to defend that. Tens of thousands have to suffer to make one person like that rich, screw that noise!
I don't think you'll get a strong consensus as to why people pirate, it's going to be varied. I do believe some people really do pirate because of DRM, or at least partially so. But that leaves a whole world of people to whom it doesn't make much of a difference. Ironically people keep pointing out that it was the DRMed version of TW2 that got cracked, it isn't entirely out of the question that at least a few folks were trying to make a rather ironic statement.

Did some people just download a free game because it was there? Sure.

Have people seen torrent trackers take down stuff due to a nicely worded request by the author stating that they release DRM free, are a little guy, and really, really try to do right by their customers? Yeah, I've heard that story more than once, which makes me believe this isn't some sort of holy war against the world, just against a very specific sort of entity.

Still, it's just guesswork and I was merely nitpicking your examples for not upholding one particular assertion you made, sorry to nitpick, daylight savings caught me off guard:) Yeah, that's my excuse, it's totally not because I'm just me!

How? How do you want to ensure that what creators create is actually secure? And how would the possibility of anyone being able to use and abuse what you create help creativity in any way? People are money-hungry bastards. Not being able to protect what you create would only lead to paranoia of original content creators and even greater ammount of crazy protection.

1) Yes, I am also proud when I create something on my own. But printing (copying) someone's project in 3D can hardly be called creating something. Are we really talking about the same thing here?

2) Now that's interesting because when a developer like Simbin or Codemasters want to create a racing game, they have to pay Ferrari to somehow acquire rights to use Testarossa (or any other model) in their game. So how cannot they be under copyright?

Personally I don't believe that completely rejecting any concept of copyrights would be the best answer, it could just as well stifle creativity as it might do good.

But I'd also like to point out the difference between an idea and a copyrighted work - ideas are not copyrighted. And if I'm not mistaken there's also a difference between the copyright of the author and the licensed copyright of a publisher, in any case that's how it is over here in Germany. The copyright of the author isn't necessarily related to monetary compensation, I think, it's more a way to acknowledge the work of the author on a ideational, non-materialistic level. I'd assume there's also a big difference between intellectual and artistic works on the one side and technical, practical works on the other.

Anyway, I admit I'm currently kind of confused how the discussion about the justification of copyrights in general relates to software piracy in particular. Surely noone meant to propose that because the concept of 'intellectual property' might be outdated, that means one should be allowed to pirate at will? :/

I wrote some answers but somehow they were eaten by my web browser or a bug on GOG website... :(
Generally I agree on many of your points. But from your point of view it would seem that piracy is absolutely okay. Do you really see it that way?

I pirate japanese anime because they arent sold here, if they are they are 100 % more expensive and region locked and its not complete.

No no no, we can't let it end this way. This is the internet goddamit!. You have to at least imply that you had intercourse with my mother!

On a more serious note, I've found a great example on how an artist "loses his work" once it has been released.

Greedo

If George Lucas had his way, every version of Star Wars would have Greedo shooting first. This actually hurt the concept of Han Solo, and not only by my opinion. When some work of art has been released, it is out there, for better or worse.

But I totally agree with you that artists need to be compensated. But in my opinion (and current development also shows this) the current system is doing this very well. And, imo, when it comes to supporting the actual artist, it works better then the old one. And I don't even have to go to the music industry now, but Double Fine is the perfect example for the gaming business. Thanks to the new "internet economics" they are finally free of the grasp of a big publisher.

And all this happens despite "rampant piracy". Because many producers finally understood that the question isn't "How do I prevent piracy" but "How can I get more income".