1) I support Stardock by paying for the game
I also support SD with my money. I buy every game I play. There are companies that I do not buy or play games from though that have offensive and prohibitive DRM schemes in place. My point was that those developers will generally not get my money again. SD is a good enough company that i paid money for a GPG game when because of hassles with them in the past I had decided not to support them as a company.
2) Copyright law is not gray at all. It's pretty clear. Just because a bunch of underage and/or irresponsible people who can't/won't pay for it steal it, doesn't make it right or "cool."
I don't believe I suggested pirates were "cool" at all. The concept of "coolness" exists within generally small groups of like minded people. If you step outside that group the concept changes. I believe that copywright law as conceived by the creators of the American Constitution existed to try and find a way to compensate artists for their work. Since then the law has been bent and twisted to meet the ends of special interests. People on both sides of the law have bent the law to their own ends. To me this makes the area grey. The following links are just examples of this happening, not a statement of support for any of the causes mentioned.
http://www.techdirt.c
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/2014om/articles/20090319/1850154187.shtml
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/11/opinion/an-abuse-of-copyright.html
http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/threads-copyright-abuse-533
3) If your friends band is a cover band it is covered by the fees the venue has to pay to play all the music when your friends band isn't there. Someone is indeed paying.
To be clear, some of the venues do pay fees. Many of the events they play at for money are also private. Like birthday parties, weddings, ect. Within the context of copyright laws, should this be permitted, or is it an act of theft?
4) Of course it was a foolish, and stupid, thing to post. In fact the arrogance required to make a post like that would make me hunt that person down and sue them if I was a developer. That kind of attitude needs to be smacked right in the kisser. But fortunately for the OP it's probably not worth the effort.
To say that it's not clear cut is simply trying to justify stealing. Which you can't do. You can make all the arguments you want but it all boils down to, are you playing a game you did not pay for? If you are, you stole it and should go to jail. If you aren't then you are the only reason developers still make games for the PC. It IS that clear cut.
As I stated above, I have paid for the game. Furthermore I suggest that anyone who plays the game more than 10 mins should purchase the game. I also recognize the fact that some people who pirated the game have ended up purchasing the game, as is the case with the OP. I am not suggesting that this makes piracy an ok thing, just that some people who play pirated games are, in my opinion, moral enough to realize that supporting the people who make the things you enjoy is the right thing to do. It is also my opinion that to not support the creators whose product you enjoy is self defeating as you are potentially hindering their ability to create more things that you could enjoy.
I appreciate the vigour with which you defend what you believe in. I agree with most of what you say, but also am suggesting that things are not always as black and white as we would like them to be. I don't believe people who speed should be handled in the same manner as a rapist. In my opinion intellectual propery has less merit than physical property. This is not a carte blanche excuse to run rampant pirating whatever you want.
One solution to this problem is to go after the people distributing pirated items rather than the ones downloading them. Another solution is to make things inexpensive enough, and easy enough to get that getting a pirated copy is more hassle than getting a legitimate one. I think venues like I-Tunes have made great strides in this direction. Digital distribution like Impulse and Steam are also good ways of doing this. The only potential weakness with these is in the price point, and the real sticking point in that is middle men like EA, Sony and other parasitic entities that rely on others creative energies to exist.
Looks like I rambled on a bit there. My apologies for that. It is not my intent to insult or belittle anyone posting here. I just am trying to look behind the curtain a bit and see if it's really the wizard back there, or just a little old man pretending to be more than he is.
