At this point, I imagine DRM advocates will accuse me of trying to "justify" piracy. I am doing nothing of the sort. I make games for a living, and I happen to think piracy is just flat-out wrong, so the $I cost of doing so is near-infinite for me.

That doesn't mean, however, that I'm willing to fork out the money-, time- and pain-in-the-butt- dollars that movie and AAA game studios demand, though - given the choice to buy legitimately or pirate, I just refuse to do either.

Most people aren't like me, though, and have a point where $P, $T, and $M will override $I and make them consider piracy. The above example is one such case.

Some of these people could be our customers. Not all of them, sure - but some of them will most definitely buy our games if we make a service that "costs" less. We can complain about pirates "stealing" our content and waste our efforts on burdensome hardware, software, and legal protections in a mostly futile attempt to stop them, or we can try to understand what drives their behavior and respond accordingly.

So, yeah, Big Media behave like greedy SOBs, because they are. Stealing from anyone, including greedy SOBs, remains unjustified and illegal. If Charles Manson steals a song from the Beatles it might be justifiable to steal it back; stealing it just because one desires it, but not enough to pay, is clearly wrong.

Also - Piracy is not "stealing," for the record.


Piracy is the unauthorized access and duplication of copyrighted material, such as a movie or video game.

Stealing is the unauthorized taking of some thing, such as money, horses, or sandwiches, which deprives the rightful owner of said stolen thing.

When you pirate Defender's Quest, you are violating my legal right to monopolize its distribution for a limited period* of time. You are not, however, "stealing" it, because I still have my copies of it, and so do all the other customers who bought it. Piracy and stealing are two different things.

*Well, copyright used to be limited, at least. It's basically forever, these days.

Stop making me defend the property rights of greedy multinational SOBs: It feels dirty. That I do it anyway ought to tell you something.

Relying solely on yelling about what’s right isn’t a pragmatic approach for the media industry to take. And it’s not working. It’s unrealistic and naïve to expect everyone to do the “right” thing when the alternative is so much easier, faster, cheaper, and better for so many of them.

The pragmatic approach is to address the demand.