What you steal is something far more abstract than a game or income. It is social input.
At least in an ideal world, everyone who works contributes to society with their work. They either produce something, offer people assistance, develop new things or contribute in one way or another in enriching human civilisation.
Someone who develops computer games puts some work into enriching the world by providing entertainment to a lot of people. If someone downloads the game and plays it without paying, they profit from this entertainment without putting anything into society in return. They act like parasites.
What someone should do if they want a game, a movie or a music album is to put in the extra work to be able to afford it.
I was talking about just music.
I think there is a serious case to be made that downloading music isn't the great loss that people make it out to be. Through downloading, I've come into contact with artists that I would have never known otherwise.
I don't have money to waste. I'm not rich. Back in the record store days, I would not have paid 25 bucks for an album of a band that I didn't know.
In a very real sense, the practice of downloading gave small bands that don't get any airtime by radio stations the opportunity to get their music into hands of people that didn't know about them.
And that includes a band I was a part of a small decade ago. We did 2 albums. And while they could be bought in a few local stores, we simply published them online for free as well. One summer, we had gigs every weekend and played before hundreds of people each time and made good money doing so. We had a fanbase. I think we sold about 200 albums or so, lol.
But our myspace and soundclick page, had thousands of downloads and followers. Those were the people that bought a ticket for the concerts.
It's 100% thanks to those free publications that we had that lucrative summer.
Without it, we would have barely made our money back from recording the albums.
I certainly agree that illegally downloading games, for example, is different in that respect.
I should also note that I don't download anymore. Now, I just have a spotify account. Which also allows me to come into contact with artists I didn't know about.
Ironically, back when I downloaded dozens of songs per day at times, I also still bought albums. Since I have spotify, I haven't bought a SINGLE piece of music.
So I actually was spending MORE money on music back when I was downloading, then today without downloading...
You got to admit.... something doesn't add up there....
People like to blame the internet/downloaders etc. But the truth is, that record labels are/were the ones to blame. They were the ones that desperatly tried to hold on to a business model that worked fine in the 70s and 80s. They refused to move along with the world into the new digital reality.
It took faaaaaar to long for services like Spotify to show up.
The same actually goes for movies and series....
15 years ago, there was broadband internet everywhere (or at least in most places) But there was no Netflix or similar. Same story. Trying to hold on to (overpriced) VHS / DVD.
Today, I have a netflix account and digital TV, wich also comes with its own library of on-demand movies, series etc.
With these services, I no longer have a need for downloads.
I also no longer have a need for a DVD player or hifi system.
Instead, I have an Xbox and a TV. And it does everything I need. It's my gateway to a digital library of entertainment.
So I don't download anymore. Not because I have ethical objections (because I honestly don't), but simply because I have no need for it any more.
