UK Pirate Party Head States His Case, Frets About Name

I am not trying to say that I am not a criminal or something like that, also I am not defending myself, I said on my post that piracy IS a crime (I did not say that it was not...).

But piracy is not stealing, you are not taking something without paying, you are copying. Remember that piracy does not encompass only data piracy, you can buy pirated cigarretes for example, or pirated drink, it was manufacture, it is a new product, using maybe even the same mean of production, piracy is not stealing because you are not subtracting something from someone, you are creating another thing without permission, it is still a crime, but it is not theft (mind you, I am not saying that it is better, or worse than theft, neither I am saying that because it is theft it is less bad, I am only saying that piracy is piracy, and theft is theft, the two are not the same, and should not be treated the same, and they don't arise from the same social problems, neither cause the same result in society).

I don't said that we need to turn the other cheek, I said that we don't need to go slashing people ears... If you for example arrest every single person that ever commited piracy, the result would be that only 10% of the costumers of the products would remain. Also some products are particularly popular because piracy (Altough this is not what I am discussing here).

Fifth: You cannot say that the poor don't own something, or something else... Yes, indeed seeing a PS3 or a computer that can run Crysis is a rarity, but like I pointed in another post here, these are not anyway the source of most piracy (damn, the PS3 can not be pirated yet, at least no widely known way exist...), you forgot that downlaod piracy (what people mostly complain) depends on Broadband, that is even less popular than PS2, I don't doubt that some games have 90% of its copies pirated, Wining Eleven series for example, for each original copy that I see (for console, not PC mind you), I see about 100 pirated, and the industry even does not know about it.

People that work at Crytek, or Actvision come crying that their games are pirated and that they will receive less salary... BUt hell, these are not even the most pirated games, they may be the most bought legally, but they are certainly not the most pirated, the most pirated games are older games, that run in any poor person machine, or new games that run in any machine and are unreachable (like no legal way to buy it, or bizarre price for the standards of the local population).

Also, in a brazillian favela you can find a television in each house, and several has PS2 or other console, remember that altough a console IS expensive somehow to them, it is cheaper than other forms of entertainment and even cheaper than other stuff like a car, or a motorcycle, or even a bycicle... It may take them a loooong time to buy it, but they eventually do.

Sixth: It is not clear right now if piracy hurts, helps or is indiffrent to the industry. Logically you would say that it hurts because people are not getting paid, but people msut remember that also it increases popularity, and that a major amount of people that pirate stuff,would plainly not buy legal if they could not pirate (thus the money would be not earned anyway). Also there are other smaller nuances that are too complex to be discussed here right now.

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EDIT: I am not a US resident, but most people here are (as the joystick logo clearly shows...), here is then a relevant article on why piracy is not theft: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States_(1985)