I grew up poor in Eastern Europe. Very poor, in fact. Without piracy I probably wouldn’t ever have been able to learn English, find my passion and make it in li

I grew up poor in Eastern Europe. Very poor, in fact. Without piracy I probably wouldn’t ever have been able to learn English, find my passion and make it in life. And not just for monetary reasons but due to access as well. Ironically enough the Internet never mattered too much because we were able to get what we wanted hand to hand. The 56k modem was completely useless when your friend had a zip drive with the games you drooled over. But it taught me to appreciate things. Even today I love physical copies of things, it is like a little trophy to the thing I love. My biggest problem nowadays is not that I can’t afford the things I love but that there is hardly anything I actually want. But when I do I often get multiple copies, whether it is on different platforms or to share the joy with friends. That being said the effects of piracy are both severe and negligible due to the quality. While it probably doesn’t affect big corporations at all, the small indie people sometimes suffer catastrophically from it.