3 ms·

I don't think this argument really holds. Saying that you couldn't afford an item and therefore wouldn't have spent any money on that doesn't really mean you'd

by mtoledo 17y ago

I don't think this argument really holds. Saying that you couldn't afford an item and therefore wouldn't have spent any money on that doesn't really mean you'd never spend any money on that given a free pirated option wasn't available. The point being we do have the money, and we do can afford it. It's just that, when you can pirate it, you end up spending your money on other things instead. But its not like you'll never have enough money that you'll ever be able to buy one game. It's interesting to observe the Playstation 3's market, because they've so far done what was unthinkable since way back the times of the PS1: a console you can't pirate. So I have a loooot of friends that live on Brazil, and that pirated all their PS2 games. And that pirate music and movies too. Some even have an Xbox360 and pirate games on it too. But all of them buy PS3 games. They don't just leave their console there hanging, playing demos, as you'd expect.

pyre 17y ago
No, it just means that the money that they do spend they redirect towards PS3 games. There are obviously people who always go for the 'low-cost' option which is usually pirating the music/game/video/etc. But you can't make that an absolute. You can't say that everyone operates in the fashion, just the way that I didn't say that my explanation applied to everyone. People have a limited amount of income, but an insatiable desire to consume. How people deal with this varies from person to person. Though we can generalize it a bit, there is no catch-all generalization that applies to everyone. In the future though, don't use anecdotes to try and prove a point. 'everyone does X because my friends in Brazil do X' is not a valid argument. > Saying that you couldn't afford an item and therefore wouldn't have spent any money on that doesn't really mean you'd never spend any money on that given a free pirated option wasn't available. If I download $3,000 worth of media per month, but I only make $3,500 per month after taxes, how can you posit that I would have bought all $3,000 worth of media where pirating it not an option? If I use the 'pirate market' as a way to consume outside of my income level (i.e. outside of my ability to consume without the 'pirate market') then how could I have purchased all of those things? To your Brazil example, what were your friends spending that money on when they were pirating PS2 games or did their income level suddenly jump when the PS3 came out?
- mtoledo 17y ago
  hey, I absolutely agree about my anedocte not applying to everyone else. What I wanted to illustrate was cases where, piracy not being an option, people just actually buy the games, rather than not buying as some people believe. As for the income/worth of consumed media for month, I surely don't believe the amount of lost sales or whatever companies claim is exactly the amount of consumed media. That's false as you clearly illustrate. It means people would consume less media, within their means. All those friends of mine, would the xbox 360 not have pirated games, would also have bought original games. They wouldn't just let it there, sitting. Would they buy every each of their pirated games? of course not. So my thought process is not like "if there weren't pirated media, people'd pay for all they consumed as pirated items", but rather "weren't there pirated media, people would either consume original media, or do something else, and we can't tell that for sure". And therefore asserting that people who pirate stuff "would have never bought that anyway" is wrong.

by mtoledo 17y ago

pyre 17y ago

No, it just means that the money that they do spend they redirect towards PS3 games. There are obviously people who always go for the 'low-cost' option which is usually pirating the music/game/video/etc. But you can't make that an absolute. You can't say that everyone operates in the fashion, just the way that I didn't say that my explanation applied to everyone. People have a limited amount of income, but an insatiable desire to consume. How people deal with this varies from person to person. Though we can generalize it a bit, there is no catch-all generalization that applies to everyone. In the future though, don't use anecdotes to try and prove a point. 'everyone does X because my friends in Brazil do X' is not a valid argument. > Saying that you couldn't afford an item and therefore wouldn't have spent any money on that doesn't really mean you'd never spend any money on that given a free pirated option wasn't available. If I download $3,000 worth of media per month, but I only make $3,500 per month after taxes, how can you posit that I would have bought all $3,000 worth of media where pirating it not an option? If I use the 'pirate market' as a way to consume outside of my income level (i.e. outside of my ability to consume without the 'pirate market') then how could I have purchased all of those things? To your Brazil example, what were your friends spending that money on when they were pirating PS2 games or did their income level suddenly jump when the PS3 came out?

mtoledo 17y ago
hey, I absolutely agree about my anedocte not applying to everyone else. What I wanted to illustrate was cases where, piracy not being an option, people just actually buy the games, rather than not buying as some people believe. As for the income/worth of consumed media for month, I surely don't believe the amount of lost sales or whatever companies claim is exactly the amount of consumed media. That's false as you clearly illustrate. It means people would consume less media, within their means. All those friends of mine, would the xbox 360 not have pirated games, would also have bought original games. They wouldn't just let it there, sitting. Would they buy every each of their pirated games? of course not. So my thought process is not like "if there weren't pirated media, people'd pay for all they consumed as pirated items", but rather "weren't there pirated media, people would either consume original media, or do something else, and we can't tell that for sure". And therefore asserting that people who pirate stuff "would have never bought that anyway" is wrong.