The simple fact of the matter is this: There is no way to precisely quantify HOW much money artists lose when people pirate their work, because there's no way to know how many people would have paid for it if they had no alternative.
However, that is not relevant when talking about individual pirates. I might not know if other people would have payed if they couldn't pirate, but I do know whether I would have payed or not, and so does every other pirate.
If I know personally, "I'd never pay for this product", then that is argument enough to remove any moral component for my own piracy, which is why I never had a bad conscience pirating when I did.
There's also the matter of "keeping honest people honest." I think REM released an album in downloadable format and asked people to pay what they felt it was worth. 90% of people didn't pay a dime. If REM were a small garage band, and trying to pay their rent and such with their music, could they afford that?
True, but then again one might ask the question whether the product offered is "worth" the prize. As a person who produces music, I don't charge for the music I make, ever. Granted that's my choice, it's also because, at this point, producing music doesn't cost me anything other than time, and electrical bills. I have a payed primary job in either case.
People forget that getting payed isn't a human right. If nobody is willing to buy your stuff, then you need to take a hard and long look at what you make and ask yourself if what you make is really something you can make into a full-time profession or not.
You can't go into creative efforts with the assumption that it's worth the monetary equivalent of a full-time job, and then blame consumers when they don't think it is.
Again, your assumption here is that, not given the choice, the majority of that 90% would have bought the music of REM at that point, but we don't know that.
The fact is for every highly successful artist who can easily afford to earn a lot less, there are a million who can't afford to make a living on their work. Some of these probably include various professional artists who make RPG Maker resources (I have no idea; I'm just guessing). Now, as consumers if we want these artists to be able to work full time producing art, they need to be paid enough SOLELY from their art, so they don't need to work a second job just to pay the bills.
The thing here is that the I think we can safely assume that the majority of pirates don't pirate indie work (I might be wrong though) - they pirate off the major producers, so that's a non-starter.
Secondly, as a consumer, I'm impartial to whether or not artists produce full time. All I care about is the final product when it is there.
Future, potential products, and when they might come out, are irrelevant to me.
And, with that being said, all this is still irrelevant as you're still running off the assumption that pirates are potential customers. I'd say that the ones who end up not buying anyway, are not.
This can be illustrated by statistics that have shown overlaps between piracy and sales, and pirate's testimonies saying that bought the product after downloading it.
At the end of the day - people who buy, buy, whether they pirate or not on the side. Those who pirate without buying are most likely a demographic of people who wouldn't buy anything to begin with. Hence they don't affect sales, and don't affect whether creative producers can pay their bills or not.
(and again, before somebody jumps at this, this is all conjecture on my part, meant to balance out the argument. I'm not saying this is necessarily the case)
For those who say "We can donate directly to the artist," I say "That's great, would YOU want to live solely on donations?"
No, but then again, I don't assume that it's a human right to be able to live off my art, and will never try to do so prior to knowing for sure that enough people are willing to pay the required amount of money for it.
Now, I do start laughing or rolling my eyes when I hear amounts quoted for "Piracy has cost the economy X billion!" for the reason I stated earlier --- anywhere from 0% to 99% of the people who pirate something would have paid for it, and that percent is unknown. But I believe strongly if we like what an artist or company makes, we should buy it so said artist or company has resources to make more of what we like. I'm sure quite a few software dev companies have folded due to piracy.
I agree that if you like a product you should buy it. That's why I buy the games I want to play.
That goes without saying.
My argument is simply that people who pirate without buying probably don't like the product all that much, don't care whether the company releases new products in the future, and are doing it only for a cheap shot at killing time with a product that caught their eye at that moment.
As for your last statement - I'm not sure, but I've never heard about it, so I wouldn't be so sure.
Again, I'm impartial (or even slightly negative) to your statement about promise of future products.
When I buy a product I consider myself paying for the costs of the product in question, and time and effort it took to make it - not to cover the artists future endeavors.
In fact, that's what the price of his or her next product is supposed to cover.
That's why being an artist is an inherently risky choice of work which boils down to talent (you produce first and get payed afterwards, unless you work in AAA industries where a company with backers and shareholders pay your salary).
You can't presuppose the value of your art before producing it, and put that into the cost of earlier made works, because the value of your art is for the consumer to determine.
Set inflated prices to your art, and nobody is going to buy it. That's the real issue. They'll still pirate it though, if they can.
Naturally, cost of most products includes a surplus that is probably going to be used for future salaries and projects, but the point I'm trying to make is that you can't as an artist, assume that whatever cost you set is going to be accepted by the consumer simply because you see it as necessary.
However, you are also using wrong analogues and problematic assumptions:
With this argument, you're assuming that ONE person buys the artwork for the full cost to the artist. This is possible and done often, but the price for exclusive art is a lot higher than anything else - for example, the true cost to make a full tileset usually goes up to several thousand dollars (unless they're edits - edits are cheaper). Just go to the classified area and calculate the prices given there (which are often non-professional, low rates) for a full tileset (which usually needs more than a hundred different tiles).
Except that I didn't. My argument wasn't "this is how it is", my argument was "this is how it can be, therefore your analogy doesn't work".
You pointing out a new scenario does nothing to change the fact that the scenario I raised is a real concern which dismisses the idea that you can equate piracy with theft.
The tangent about cost is irrelevant in either case. The costs aren't the issue - the issue is whether or not you're actually stealing, or doing something immoral, , when you haven't actually taken anything from somebody, but rather copied something and redistributed it for free.
However, that is not affordable by anyone so the there was made a different option: to purchase something non-exclusive with the calculating that if something is sold to a hundred persons for let's say 20$ each, the artists gets the 2000$ he would have gotten from the single-person exclusive commission.
And now imagine one of those people (who paid only a small part of the artworks cost) distributes it free of charge, resulting in less people purchasing that pack.
Which again assumes that these people would have bought them if they couldn't pirate it - which is an assumption.
I never said that everyone who pirated something would have purchase it if it weren't available for free - that assumption is as wrong as your assumption that no one pirates something just because it is available.
No, but every single statement you make is based on the assumption that such is the case.
I am not assuming that everyone who pirate are not potential customers, I am simply rejecting the assumption that they are.
When you do that, the default assumption should be "I cannot know one way or another whether pirates would have bought it or not (except for those who explicitly say they would or wouldn't), therefore I cannot know whether companies lose money or not."
"If I cannot know whether or not companies lose money or not, I cannot make a moral argument for why it is wrong to pirate, hence the logic thing to do so to not make that claim."
People are making that claim though, so here I am pointing out that you can't.
Both sides of the argument needs to get off their horses of absolute numbers - of course not everyone is a pirate, but claiming that pirates do not exist is as wrong as the other side. The problem is that neither the "industry" nor the "pirates" are interested in getting hard and proovable numbers.
Except that there aren't really two sides. This isn't two sides both making a positive claim - it's one side making a positive claim and the other side rejecting it.
It's not my job to prove that it's okay to pirate, it's the job of those rejecting it to prove that it's immoral/wrong.
If the only argument is "companies are losing profit", then my answer to that is "how do you qualify that?". If you can't, the default position should be either "it isn't wrong", or a tentative "if it causes company to lose money, it's wrong".
To say that there is some sort of equal footing here is to imply that it's okay to label an action as immoral, wrong, or legally unjustified by default, and then try to force people justify it. That's extremely backwards in my opinion.
So I have a challenge for everyone who thinks that software piracy is no crime:
Instead of arguing why software piracy is no crime, please tell the artists how they should get food on their table based on their work. The only condition I have is: don't make differences between people (no one should have special access that others don't have) and don't claim structures like "let someone else pay if I cannot".
Well, I've pointed out when and where I think piracy is wrong. The act of pirating game resources, then using them in your own creation and selling it, is clearly wrong, and is also clearly different from just pirating something for personal use, but I digress, since my last post already made that clear.
I think artists should have primary jobs, like everyone else. Living of art is a privilege that you earn by first making art and then having your art recognized to the point that you can quit your day-job.
People who think you start off by living off your art, are getting things backwards.
What people tend to forget is that literally every single art industry in the world was built by enthusiasts at some point, with really meager and ****ty beginnings.
Now people feel entitled to step into the role of a fully fledged artist from the get-go and it's ridiculous.
If you want to be an artist, make art when you can with what you have. If what you make has any worth, people will recognize you and pay for it. That allows you to spend more time and effort on your art, until one day you can be self-sufficient.
Many people will take risks - they approach possible backers, banks etc, accumulate loans in a gamble on their final product selling well enough to pay it back down.
The relative success of the game then enables them to carry on with their creative work.
This is how the game industry was made to begin with. If people aren't willing to do this, I can't say I think their careers or their products have the right to see light of day to begin with.
These industries are competitive for a reason.
