First of all: piracy isn’t theft or robbery. In both we had to assume that exists a subtraction of something, physical or not. Explaining better, in a robbery we are using violence and we taking a good from another person. The person victimized by some robber actually loses something (a car, a computer …) and is attacked violently. In a theft occurs the same (someone loses something), but without the use of violence, and, in both cases, there is a palpable prejudice: the person robbed no longer has possession of what was stolen.
That does not occur with copies - the usual piracy - because the person who “suffers the copy” remains in possession of what was copied, and is still enjoying it, without palpable damage. What happens is just a perfect copy, a duplication of something, pure and simple.
So, why the industry - music, publishing, gaming, movies - and the media make us believe that piracy equals theft? That’s a little more complex, because this practice ends up attacking, mainly, the status quo of the information flow. Publishers - I'll take them as an example - always held the monopoly of information in our modern society and always profited billions with this. And always tried to curb the copy and the sharing of these works - photocopying is crime, lend is crime, exchange is crime, resell is crime … if you think carefully, everything is a crime by the publishers’ point of view.
None of these attempts ever worked, and worse (for them) with the Internet culture of sharing, the information sharing it became much faster than before and with a much greater range. These publishers realized that and then attack people creating the false impression that this kind of attitude would kill the industry - and then, the opposite occurred: we never write and publish much as today.
Now the industry found a new front to “defend”: they are protecting the author. Yes, now the copy happened to be a copyright problem and the benevolent publishers are concerned only with the author, who does not gain anything with the copy and we are stealing the intellectual property from the authors.
To say that, first we have to get back to the pricing for services or products and how it is determined, or rather, how this affects the consumer price.
The final price of a product is not determined in a random and arbitrary way; in fact, the price has a reason to be fixed in some range. The price of a product must cover the costs to produce and also make a profit for the author/producer. Those who consume have to understand if the price of a product is consistent with its value (this value is subjective and depends on the brand positioning in the market and in which sector/social and economic class this brand wants to target). This price is calculated on the head of each consumer; we try to adjust the price with what we expect from the product. That's why products from 99 cents in the App Store are pirated: because the value of the product does not match what the consumer - the majority at least - expect from it.
Another interesting point is what the industry understands how piracy works. Borrow a video game from a friend is piracy, buy an used game is piracy, trade games with friends is piracy and, finally, all the means of acquisition other than the usual - shopping - is piracy because is a violation of the EULA and the original work (every work is sold "as is" and should not be distributed or consumed without the express permission of the owners) and you can be arrested for that.
What most people fail to understand is that piracy is still a crime in Brazil (and for that matter we do not have much to do, except change the law, but I doubt that this happens because the Brazilian justice service serves to the economic power not the citizen), but this is not wrong. Saying that something is wrong is a moral and ethical judgment (who says that is wrong? Why is it wrong?). Although you can say that you think it is wrong (for N reasons), but beyond that, nothing more can be said (piracy is illegal, against the law, but is not, in my view, something wrong).
Another point that many pirates beat, and that should not be overlooked, is the availability of original content to be consumed. Here in Brazil it is still a small and restricted market to consumers who wants to be legal (you have to have a international credit card and buy something in dollar, which will make you pays IOF, at least). But even in the U.S. and Europe we still problems (other problems), and at this point we can say (and perceive) that it’s easier and simpler to get the pirated product without paying copyright, than getting the original product (and this without talking about the quality of the pirated product, which often surpasses the original product).In other words, if you can consume the product you will need to overpay for a product of lesser quality and you also will have to pass by a series of complicated geographical and content locks. I really can’t see how an industry can maintain his leadership in the market with this kind of practice.
In my opinion is that the entertainment industry was determining prices for years in a system that were this industry dominated and determined both, the shortage and the availability of its products in some kind of corporate dictatorship where few had access to the content. And now this seesaw changed sides with the broadband internet - and even with the dial-up - when P2P networks and the file sharing culture dominated the world, now all content can be replicated almost instantly anywhere in the world and shared with all people who like this content, without costs beyond those charged by phone companies. In other words, you pay nothing for the content itself. And that will determine a new business model for these companies, a model that is suited to new means of distribution and consumption of this new media.
Summarizing: piracy does not occur because we have high prices, piracy occurs because we have restricted access to certain content (and not because we are all bandits acting "wrong" everyday). Piracy occurs because copyright laws are stupid and outdated and exists to maintain certain benefits to a weighty group of companies who use force and dubious moral values (to say the least) to stay in power and continue to determine the information flow. I find it very difficult to succeed in something through legal means (the justice system is rotten inside, and only understands the language of economic power) not to mention that the notion of copyright, intellectual property and all the terms that surround this type of content are something very recent in our culture, coming exactly with the creation of the printing press and the rise of these publishing corporations that exists precisely to protect the profits of the information industry (and not the author).
