Anyone else remember this PIRACY IS THEFT!!!!!!! ad? It was a fairly scarring part of my childhood and it perpetrates a pervasive metaphor in copyright and piracy debates.
But here's a thought, the most pirated cultural content is also the highest grossing content and there may be a correlation between illegal downloads and digital purchases. So, if pirates also also the ones that legally access the IPs that they encroach on, the theft metaphor doesn't hold up as well. But if pirates are more likely to consume media anyways, why bother illegally accessing media?
Well, why should we blindly trust that we'll get our money's worth? Consider that a console video game is about to hit CDN$100. That is a substantial sum to spend on an untested product. I wouldn't even buy a lipstick without testing it (and a movie ticket is now more expensive than my lipstick). If the conglomerations that control our media refuse to give a clue at what we're paying for, illegally accessing a (usually) inferior product to test it first just seems like the smart thing to do.
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