Yes, but I think it works exceptionally for other software, like games!
One example that stands out was the hacking/modding scene of the GTA Vice City with Multi Theft Auto, and even GTA SA, which gained a massive player base that would have never experienced the game and created emotional bonds with it. I can't prove this of course, but I bet a huge portion of the GTA V success was from users who played a moded version of the game in the past "for free".
Another example is the Adobe Suite, like Photoshop, and Illustrator, which allowed many people to become proficient with the Adobe tools and be part of a qualified workforce using that same suite of tools. A lot of these professionals from low-income countries would never had access to these tools otherwise in their formative years.
Price is a barrier to entry for many users who wouldn't have paid for the software.
Take World of Goo. Very popular game. Released in 2008; got a sequel in 2024. Why so long for a sequel? In part, because when they experimented with a DRM-free release, they had a piracy rate of over 90%. Can you prove that's lost sales? No. Would any reasonable person say that is lost sales? Absolutely.
Ever wonder why mobile games failed, and why every mobile game is seemingly full of ads? The Android piracy rate is enormous (over 60%); and freemium allows money to be earned while denting piracy rates. Let's not forget also why Nintendo went after Yuzu - over 1 million illegal downloads of Tears of the Kingdom before the game even launched. How many do you think paid afterwards?
And before anyone quotes the one or two studies showing an increase in sales from piracy; that ignores the 30+ studies showing a moderate to severe sales impact from piracy, that we also have. Nobody talks about those though, because that's a rather unpopular conclusion. However, you can't pick and choose studies to show it is a good thing.
> Can you prove that's lost sales? No. Would any reasonable person say that is lost sales? Absolutely.
Of course not. People pirate more than they consume. The amount of series and movies in my backlog is insane. I have them physically on a RAIDZ2 (RAID6) and I have access to various streaming services. But what I lack is time. I used to watch the same stuff in the 90s cause of not having access to more (or very mediocre stuff on TV). Then piracy came into play and I could download many stuff I couldn't afford. Now I have more money available, but I don't have the time anymore. It is the same with regards to my Steam library. However, a lot of that is stuff bought on sale, and that is not 1:1 compared to a gained sale as the profit wasn't full price.
>Take World of Goo. Very popular game. Released in 2008; got a sequel in 2024. Why so long for a sequel? In part, because when they experimented with a DRM-free release, they had a piracy rate of over 90%. Can you prove that's lost sales? No. Would any reasonable person say that is lost sales? Absolutely.
And seems like they learned nothing from this terrible experience, because they've also released World of Goo 2 DRM-free: https://worldofgoo2.com/
It sure is, and those people should promptly return their stolen Photoshop bits to the front door of any local fire station so Adobe can put them back into their bit warehouse and ship them to paying customers next day air
It's not property theft by most definitions, but it's still harmful in much the same way as property theft is harmful -- and in exactly the same way that me watching you type in your password is harmful, even though afterwards you still know your own password.
One of our two mental models of property theft is incorrect: someone downloading Photoshop does not deprive Adobe of its ability to sell the Photoshop it manufactured to someone else
And I adamantly disagree with your password analogy if for no other reason than your password scenario creates temporal harm (assuming I do not change my password, of course) in a way that someone pirating version 1.0 does not automatically give them access to 1.1 or other product lines. In fact, I'll see your temporal factor and raise you: if someone pirates a product on Monday, and then buys the product on Tuesday, should they be jailed on Wednesday?
I'm eventually going to be sorry that I waded into this discussion, but I found the stolen bits == property theft so absurd I wanted to mock it, and now it seems this thread is somehow doubling down on false equivalences.
Piracy can be morally wrong for taking food out of software engineer's mouths, but one should not lump it into breaking-and-entering just to ratchet up the "look at how bad it is" factor
No, I think they're the same. Probably they feel different to you, depending on who you're stealing from, but ripping a DVD and putting it up on the internet during the theatrical window can really hurt filmmakers – who already make peanuts.
One person breaking and entering is bad. But in my example, this person broke-and-entered and then gave all of my future earnings away to literally everyone on the planet, thanks to the multiplicative power of technology – that's an outrageous violation.
I wouldn't use the term "property theft", as even though there's a very clear analogue to IP and digital economics for anyone who cares to think about it, pro-piracy pedants will gladly jump on the term (which is strongly tied to physical property) to avoid addressing the problem itself. This problem doesn't happen as much with other terms like "theft", "IP theft", and "piracy".
You don't have to be "pro-piracy" to be anti media propaganda that tries to equate duplication with denial of a person's right to their own property. They're very different things.
If you think copyright infringement and theft are synonymous then presumably you'd be happy with people paying for copyrighted goods with a picture of some money, because a copy that doesn't involve a transference of control is identical with the actual item, right?!
You're right, you didn't steal my bank password, you can use that to commit fraud, deceiving the bank systems to then enable stealing.
Some might says you did steal the password, because you made it unusable for me, but that's a pretty subtle position I'm content with either side of.
Perhaps you'd understand better if you consider a physical key - if you take it then I cannot open the lock (with that key at least). If you only copy it, I can still open the lock, so you didn't steal it from me; but the possibility of use allowed you to deny me the use of whatever the lock protects. Not so with most copyright works. If you copy my music I can still listen to my copy as often a I like.
I agree that it's the exact same evil, I just wouldn't use "property theft" either to describe those things - for instance, in the case of wages, I think most people would use "wage theft" instead.
As long as you use accurate terms (ie. the right terminology) there wouldn't be such pedantry needed. You intentionally mudify the discussion by using the term property theft for non-phyisical intellectual property (which can even be shortened to IP), or preferably: copyright infringement (I stick to the term IP in this post but prefer the term copyright infringement). Different laws apply for IP compared to (physical) property. Including laws of physics. Consider the following thought experiment: try kicking your license of Microsoft Windows compared to kicking the window in your kitchen. Does your license to Microsoft Windows still work? Great. Does your kitchen window still work? Try harder, it won't last. But your Microsoft Windows license is invulnerable to physical kicking. Besides, you have a copy of it on your smartphone as you photographed it in case of you physically losing it.
Haha, yeah, I'm pretty sure there would be a hell of a lot less working professionals using the Adobe suite today if we had all used Adobe's generous 14-day trial to get to grips with Photoshop or Flash or Dreamweaver when we were 12 or 13 years old. Or enrolled in University, I guess?
I would expect Adobe would be nothing but a forgotten brand name list to the annals of time at this point, considering their Suite has been the most pirated application every year since the early days of Windows 95...
And yet....
