this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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[–] DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Holy fuck this meme is so old it's probably of legal age to drink

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[–] Lectral@lemmy.ca 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Piracy is making a child share toys with the kid who has none.

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[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 6 points 3 days ago (29 children)

I am 100% down for sailing the high seas. But let's not sugarcoat it, this analogy is always been kind of crap.

Somebody went to your mailbox took out your paycheck, made a copy of it, put the original back in your box, went to the bank and cashed it.

Theft still took place. You're probably still getting paid. Maybe it got taken up by insurance and everyone's premium goes up a tiny fraction, maybe it got taken up by the bank or by your business.

It's still an incomplete analogy but it's a little bit closer.

That's not to say that the vast majority of piracy isn't people who wouldn't pay anyway. And back in the day, you certainly got more visibility in your games from people who were pirating.

But now that advertising is on its toes and steam exists, I won't think they're getting any serious benefit from piracy and I don't think that they're not losing At least modest numbers of sales.

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 days ago

Nah. That analogy does not work.

Piracy situation is more like you have made a cool statue and you charge people money for looking at your statue. Then someone comes, looks at your statue, and goes away without paying.

There's no thief, nothing was stolen at any point. The one how came looking without paying was probably never going to pay for an entrance, and the statue can me still be looked by anyone. Nothing is loss in the process, no harm is done. Some guy just looked at a statue without paying for it.

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[–] MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Isn't it more akin to stealing money though? Or to be more precise stealing the potential of money since not everyone who pirates would ever have paid for it on the first place.

[–] Steve@communick.news 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

That assumes you were entitled to something that nobody owed you.

If the money was never yours, can you say it was stolen from you?

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