The Generous Man Walks Barefoot.
Its a Metaphor. It isnt for their lack of ability to pay for shoes that causes them to be in such a state, but their selflessness that causes them to be shoeless. In this case, the Generous Man gives away all that he has to others because he feels that their needs outweigh his own. He doesnt benefit financially for his efforts, but does feel that he is rewarded by a sense of altruism. Its one of the reasons you see many religious figures depicted withotu shoes. They put other peoples needs before their own.
The opposite of this is Greed. We all know that there are some companies out there who put profits ahead of EVERYTHING else. They put Profits ahead of Employee Wellbeing. They put Profits ahead of the needs of the people who their products or services are designed to help. But they want their cake and eat it too. The thing is, they can have their cake and eat it, but the way they have to accomplish it is to shit it back out so they can still have it. Greed devours itself.
In terms of Piracy, there is a BALANCE between being Altruistic and Greed. There are many cases where Piracy actually HELPS the sale of a product. But businesses wont survive by giving away everything they create for free. Businesses that devour themselves through Greed also wont survive. I sure as hell wouldnt pay 1,000 bucks for a Video Game. And AAA Games are quickly reaching the same development costs as Blockbuster Movies. Sure, they need to stay in business, but charging too much for a product pushes people into Piracy for that product. There is a Balance.
As F0 said, $10,000+ for VS Unlimited as F0 said is completely unaffordable for the average person. The thing is VS Unlimited can still run on the average persons computer. A validating point for charging so much for this product is the ammt of effort it takes a company to produce such a product is very very high. Many of the costs included are also in the Education of the Developers. And there is a huge drawback in that mom and pop are not going to have any interest in the product what so ever. So you have High Development Cost and very few purchases of the product. The price has to go way up in order for the company to stay in business and develop the next version of VS.
Piracy also tremendously helps these companies because if a person understands how to use such an extremely complex product, they will have more incentive to buy. 3D Studio, Maya, Visual Studio, Etc. High End Products. These products have the problem of targetting to a buyer base that doesnt know how to use their products. Its a Rock and a Hard Place. They have to know how to use the Product before they can earn money to afford the Product. You cant get a job without specific experience, but you cant get experience without that specific job. The solution to this is Learning Editions. Some features are limited, but cost to the individual that wants to learn is much lower, affordable and in their price range. This helps to have that Balance between Filthy Rich and Barefoot Altruist.
Its a Balance. If a person was charged 99 cents every time they listened to a song on their I-Device, they'd resort to Piracy. Or, they'd listen to their Music by some means that doesnt cost them anything to listen. TV shows cost loads of money to produce and distribute. Yet, they can still stay in business even when end user gets to see the shows and movies they produce for Free. This is offset by Advertising. But people dont always respond that great to heavy Advertising when they have the option of changing the channel to something else that will give them what they want. Got two Rock Stations over the Radio, one plays a commercial, flip to the other one. But for them to have their cake and eat it, they'd have only ONE Radio station that plays X-Type of music. Captive Audience. Many companies are upsetting the Balance by forcing Advertising on us during observation of their Products in order to bolster their profits. And that Forced Interrupting Advertising drives their audience to competitive ways to use the products.
I typically do Pirate TV Shows. I have a DVR that records two shows at the same time. Yeah, need to upgrade that, but Im broke. The shows I pirate, I can watch on my DVR but since there are 3 shows that come on at the same time that I watch, I dont have much choice. So the show I pirate is the one with the most intrusive advertising. They've been putting this crap at the bottom of the screen that many times covers as much as a full third of the screen. Those types of Ads are covering up Subtitles and other show content to such an extent that the show is nearly unwatchable. Some channels do it more than others, so I pirate the show that does it the worst. Funny thing is that the Pirated version doesnt have any of that crap at the bottom of the screen. I would have gotten that show for free anyway on my DVR so to me I dont see much of a difference.
The point of that is people respond to Incentives. Piracy is not Good. Piracy is not Evil. It is not Moral or Immoral, Piracy is Competition, and Competition thrives due to Incentives. People have an Incentive to not pay for products, as much as they do to Pay when the products are Maintained, people are provided Support, or in cases of Games, Sequels! DRM doesnt stop Piracy. It barely even slows it down. DRM when extreme also drives many people to resort to Piracy for products they are willing to pay for. I'll also admit that I had to Pirate the game Prey when it was released. I bought it, didnt play it for a couple of weeks, but their Online DRM went offline and I was unable to use the product I paid for. So I pirated it. I paid for it, and I wanted to use it. The pirates provided better support for the game I paid for than the company did. It created an Incentive by Competing. The support the Pirates provided was better than the support the Company provided. With Prey, their DRM company went out of business and their servers were shut down so no one could play. It was several months, but they finally did send me a DVD of the game, but that was months after the company folded. Point is that the Competition created the Incentive to use a Pirated Version over the Legitimate Version.
The ironic bit here is that Piracy probably still helped Game Sales. If there was no other way to play the game other than to use the Online DRM version, sales would have been much lower. There is no incentive to buy a game that you can not play because their DRM Servers are offline. The support provided by Piracy enabled people to play the game despite the DRM company going out of business. DRM could have destroyed years of work by the Developers, and the very Developers who feared Piracy were helped out by the Piracy of their game. Many times the people who Pirate copyrighted material are the legitimate paying customers.
Many of the Publishers try to fear monger by creating unrealistic damages caused by Piracy. People who pirate arent always looking for the Product for free. Some who use pirated products have no intention of ever paying for that product to begin with. The Publishers respond to their own fear mongering and keep trying to come up with ever more and more invasive methods of DRM protection. They are fooling themselves into thinking that all piracy is bad, and all people who use pirated software are evil. It isnt and they arent.
These companies need to see Piracy for what it truly is. Competition. I bought a Toyota but I never get it worked on at the Toyota dealership. Why? Competition offers me more incentive. Theres nothing illegal or unlawful about having another more affordable mechanic work on my car. I love my car. It still runs great. But all things break down, and you have to do standard maintenance. Replace belts and hoses, brakes, oil changes, etc. The truly Greedy Publishers (not all are) would sell you a Toyota and do everything in their power to force you to only have Maintenance done by their Dealerships. Trust me, there are some that would propose such ideas because one way to best your competition is to make the Competition Illegal, which many times eliminates the Competition. With Piracy it flat out does not work. When these companies wake up to the fact that Piracy is Competition and the best way to handle Competition is to be Competitive. Offer Competitive Prices and Incentives. Offer Competitive Maintenance. Offer Competitive means to make sure that when products are paid for, that services are provided in reasonable times. I wouldnt go to Toyota and wait a week and a half for an Oil Change when I can get it done at a local Mechanic in 30 minutes. Or I'd just do it myself, weather permitting.
These Greedy Companies are now trying as hard as they can to Eliminate Competition and still treat Pirates as All Bad and Evil. Evidence of this is the War on Used Game Sales. They want to Repeal the Bill of First Sale Doctrine because it stands in the way of their Profits. Again, Balance between Greed an Altruism. If I cant SELL a game I purchased and paid for, I've now been given an Incentive to Pirate the game because I cant sell it. They are missing the point in that they are the ones pushing me to resort to Piracy by creating an Incentive to use the Competition over their Services. Its not that I dont want to support the company that created the product, but I feel as a consumer, I am now being punished for paying for their product.
The only time I feel Piracy truly hurts the content creators is when Pirates duplicate and sell the products and keep all the money from the sales for themselves. Most people who download software do NOT do this. And personally, I think that the application of the label of Pirate to people who Download Software is a misapplication of the term. The only Real Pirates are the ones that Financially Harm the Creators of the Product. This includes both the Publishers, and those who Duplicate the Product and keep all of the money from the sales for themselves. When the term Pirate is applied to you and I, it implies that we are Criminals because we respoded to Incentives which simply does not distinguish Theft from Quality of Service. You and I are not Pirates. We dont intend to cause harm to the Developers or their Company. We dont try to make money by selling stolen stuff. Most people steal Pens from work. We take them home and use them. That isnt Piracy. It barely qualifies as Theft. Intentionally taking Pens from work and selling them to our friends at a lower rate would be Theft because there is an intention of benefitting from harming another. We are NOT Pirates, and the more that we think of ourselves as Pirates, the more we fall into their Legal Loopholes by agreeing with their misapplication of terms, and begin to think of ourselves as Criminals.
We are not Pirates. We are not criminals. We are only NEITHER Pirates nor Criminals when we do not intend to harm by our Actions, and do not try to SELL downloaded material. And I think people who take advantage of being able to download software that can be used in an unrestricted fashion need to STOP referring to themselves as Pirates. We simply respond to the Incentives offered by Competition. We are DOWNLOADERS, not Pirates.