Video game piracy

I just watched this week's G1 submission and I wanted to say a few things about the subject because I was recently thinking about it a lot.

The problem with video game piracy is connected to similar problems faced by the movie and music industries. Ironically those problems just as video game piracy are growing stronger because of what is being done to prevent them. One guy told me that he downloads music because of stupid licenses that allow him to listen only 10 times (!) to the music on the legally bought CD (while he paid an equivalent of 29 USD (!) for it). The similar case was with Spore. Because of the fucked up DRM the game set new piracy "records" while ironically people behind it were saying even at the early development stages that it will be at least partially immune to piracy.

People talk about games being downloaded from the Internet but I think that it isn't as big of a problem as people who make illegal copies of games and then sell them for 10% of the original price because those people are making money of someone else's work while not giving them anything. They are the real problem.

I also think that they are the ones that should fined. Let me explain by using an example. Imagine that you have an opened tap and the water is overflowing. What do you do? Do you start removing the water from the floor or do you close the tap? Now in this example the water represents illegal copies of games while the wet floor represents consumers of such copies. The tap represents mostly the people who sell those illegal copies to make profit for themselfs but also people who make those copies available on the Internet. Now if anyone were to start fighting the piracy of video games, movies or music the proper course of action is to fine people who make those illegal copies available in the first place and not the consumers. Fining the consumers won't stop the piracy and is literally like removing the water from the floor while the water keeps on coming. Also if we were to think about it for a minute than we will come to a conclusion that most people are taking part in the whole piracy business even if don't know that they are doing so. Take Youtube for example. There are thousands upon thousands of people who watch illegal copyrighted material every day, hour, minute and second. Most of those people haven't bought rights to watch these things so technically they are committing a crime (while sometimes such things can stay available on Youtube for more than 2 years) but do you think we should go after each and everyone of them and fine them for it? Of course not because that's just ridiculous. And if that example isn't enough than here's another one. Imagine that you're visiting a friend. While both you talk your friend has some music playing in the background. Unless you have your ears shut (or you're deaf) while you and your friend communicate telepathically (or using sign language) you're bound to hear music you didn't buy the rights to listen to. Should you be fined? Of course not because that again would just be ridiculous.

IMHO we should stop putting games (as well as movies and music) on disks or other data storage devices and instead let their digital form be legally bought and downloaded from the Internet. That way the games will be a lot cheaper because the production costs will considerably go down and the piracy will also get weaker because most people will buy games instead of going through the trouble of downloading or buying them from someone else for 10% of the price.