Guess who holds the copyright to the Happy Birthday song? The Copyright laws are messed up, and just because some person got screwed does not changethe fact they are heavily abused now. Look around at all the  media you consume, and then kiss it all good-bye because if the laws were always as tilted as they are now, everything would be copyrighted to death. There were would be no vampires, no undead movies, no werewolves, no fantasy games because the people who formulated those idea or at least the  ones that "ran" down to the office first, would claim everything and fee everyone to death. Hell you've got Nintendo trying to claim a saying that's been dead for 20 years that they didn't even create as theirs. Copyright laws, as they are now, are garbage. That does not excuse piracy, but the industry can keep trying to lay traps, capture who they can but that won't kill a J-curve population. You've got to go at the source, and one of those is not the ISPs, that's the bullshit that are the copyright laws in existence today.

Normally, I don't comment on off topic conversations, but I think this is a fairly important topic, which most people seem to completely misunderstand. Modern Copyright and intellectual property laws have more to do with Mickey Mouse than ensuring the rights of dedicated and hardworking artists. Historically speaking, copyrights began in the 18th century and were developed to give authors and map makers productive rights to their works. In the US, copyrights were originally granted during the second constitutional convention and were provisionally given by the government for a period of 14 years with a renew of 14 more years only if the creator lived for the full term. Currently, the united states gives copyrights for 120 years to works for hire ( corporation held copyrights) made after 1978, which means that the copyright of a modern art work will outlast its creator by probably about 50 years.

As most people believe, copyrights supposedly protect a person's work so that they or their institutions may benefit from their labor. The underlying idea being that this gives these individuals a greater incentive to create and progress our societies overall understanding. Yet, we must be wary in this line of thinking, as it prioritizes the rights of the individual over any concerns from the community at large. In an effort to not make this a full blow essay, I will break this down in two particular ways. The first is an example and the second is an explanation.

Lets take our example. Between the 17th and 19th centuries, the music developed in Europe pushed the boundaries of form and function to such a degree that it still rivals music produced today in terms of beauty and grace. Musical visionaries, such as Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven, produced a body of work so immensely imaginative and intriguing that it is still being studied and preformed to this day. Yet, during this time, none of these composers had anything remotely resembling copyright over their work, and in fact, these composers were constantly reproducing and enhancing the work of their peers. In many ways, it was the openness of the music that allowed so many masters to create such grand works of art.

My second point is a simple discussion of capitalism. Most people assumes something that is untrue about capitalism. If one considers a single dollar ( or any single unit of currency ) as a vote, then for capitalism to resemble a democratic system all people would have to have the same life time income. That is, the overall income of every person in that system from their birth to their death would have to be roughly equivalent. This way, no one person would have more total votes than another on the whole, though in smaller more refined cases, one person might have more votes simply because the other person is saving his or her votes for something else. Modern international capitalism is more closely resembles and oligarchy, that is, the rule of a few over the majority. In 2007, the top 1% of the US population held 34.6% of the wealth and the next 19% held 50.5% ( data: http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html). This means that 80% of the US held only roughly 15% of the wealth of the nation. This data also takes into account the net value of assets like one's home. Without those assets, this bottom 80% holds only 7% of the financial wealth. This means that 80% of the US has only 7% of the votes in the US economy.

You may be correct in the assumption that two individuals, one with 10x money as the other, who desire to buy a singular game will only purchase one each. Yet, this makes a very important assumption, which is that our richer person cares as much as our poor person about the quality of the game. In reality, the poor person should take very real care that his game purchases are good and that the company producing the product also cares about making good games. Whereas the rich person needs not necessarily care at all whether a particular game is good or bad. Now, since you didn't see the particular tie-in to copyright and intellectual property, the value of copyrighted materials is set by the copyright holder. In the most general cases, this value is priced to allow for the maximum market output, or at least this is the idea. As the wealth distributions become more skewed towards a smaller and smaller minority, the majority will simply not have the income to purchase more than one or two copyrighted products per year. So the price of these products will not have to stay low enough to support these individuals, and eventual most people will not be able to afford copyrighted works. Most people may think this is crazy talk, but if one really considers the amount of copyrighted materials, the amount of generally purchasable materials is shrinking as the limited licenses for those materials become more and more strict.

I can very easily make this claim for a number of reasons. Firstly, most modern musicians make more money from their concerts than their CD/song sales. Secondly, the copyrights do not simply cover recordings, but usually cover most aspects of a musical endeavor. This means that the copyright holder owns, the recording, the lyrics, the music, and reproductions of all of these. Recently, a lot of guitar tab sites were shut down for violating copyrights by simply providing instructional tabs, created by third parties based on their own attempts to a particular song. Going back to my point about capitalism, how is an aspiring musician supposed to learn from the great works of art if there is an economic barrier being erected between himself and those works.

In general I do think it's extremely unrealistic to think that the price of games will ever be so high that only the rich will be able to afford to buy them. It's a product that's increasingly being marketed more and more towards the general public. All recent evidence and trends and economic theory would point to the opposite of what you are claiming.

As for music, I still think your missing the point about how different the world today is to the world 400 years ago. But you also seem to be claiming that it's impossible for any modern musician to learn from and be inspired by existing works because they are copywrited. But almost any modern artist lists numerous works and artists that they learned from and were inspired by.

I am not exactly sure what you are claiming with respect to economic theory showing trends toward price reduction. Much of the economic data suggests periods of hyperinflation in the forseeable future. To point to a much more specific set of data which shows this kind of move towards near unaffordable games, one simply needs to point to the initial $600 price point for the Playstation 3. While this price has dropped considerably since its first release, it still retains a $300 dollar entry fee and the cost of games are in the $60 price range per game. In fact, with the notable exception of the Wii, both the XBox 360 and the Playstation 3 had incredibly high initial price points and utilized a ranged price point with the lower end versions lacking some basic functionality. In fact, looking even more closely at the underlying points behind Sony's insistence on the use of blu-ray, one finds that this medium has a significantly higher price point for the associated media. Even expanding this beyond consoles to games themselves, the EA/Ubisoft methodologies of game development push significantly lower development costs while maintaining a static price point for their new titles. Honestly speaking, one does not need to price game so high that they are unaffordable to all but the most rich among us, but with the current pricing structure of music, games, and books, the average American consumer can only afford to enjoy a very small portion of the total media output of our society, and even less of the intellectual output, which tends to have a much higher price point.

I am not claiming it to be impossible for modern musicians to learn from the current body of work, but it is becoming harder and harder for the average musician to do so. It is important here for us to address your last point. Modern musicians are corporate animals and the information concerning these individuals is heavily filtered via PR and Marketing. Now, to discuss artists on the whole, aspiring authors and film makers have a lot of methods to become inspired by the larger body of work, but due to the corporate controls, the works of these individual either must conform to a certain set of guides or be so great to be hard to ignore. Coming back to musicians, we find that the vast majority of musicians no longer even write their own music or arrange their own pieces. These individuals are generally selected for look and sound. Is it any wonder that Taylor Swift is a beautiful white girl and sells a great many records?

While you have a valid point, it doesn't work in this situation. Technology becomes cheaper as time goes by, not more expensive. If you were to build a machine with the capabilities of an Atari 2600 today, it would not cost even close to 700 dollars. Those components are cheaper, despite inflation.

If what was high tech in the 70s cost half that today (Or even $100 less if we go by the ps3 when it was released), then games and game consoles ARE going down in prices.

Inflation is something you have to go by.  Go outside, out of the parents basement.  Are groceries more expensive?  Can you ignore that inflation?

Not that hard to understand.

Accounting for inflation is not about determining how much something would cost today. It's about counting how much a certain amount of money was equal to by today's standards. $200 by 1977 standards is about equal to $700 by today's standards. The point is just to give an idea of how expensive something is relative to the economy at the time.

I did finally find a classic game to compare prices on. Master of Magic, released in 1994 had a price tag of a little below 60. That's the equivelent to a little over 80 dollars today.

I think your completely missing the point of what I was saying. I've said on several occasions that it has nothing to do with what something would cost today.

Let me ask you this. Would you agree that $200 in 1977 had considerably more buying power then $200 does today? And that it would represent a significantly larger amount of the average salary in 1977 then it would now?

Ok now I will grant you that the inflation index is not perfect. As you say, not every item is more expensive to the same extent now compared to then. Some items go up by more and some items go up by less or get cheaper. So the actual amount that $200 from 1977 is worth may not be $700 depending on what you spend it on. It may be something more or it may be something less. $700 is just our best estimate.

However all of this, while true, is not entirely relevent to what was being discussed, which is how difficult it is for a family on a budget to afford games now compared to the past. My argument is that buying games and gaming systems is less punishing to a families budget today then it was 30 years ago, and that this trend will only improve in the future. The person I was arguing with felt that games and technology will get more and more expensive with time until only the very wealthy can afford them. I only brought inflation into it because you have to make some mention of inflation when you are comparing prices from 1977 to 2011.

Ironically your arguments about how the price of technology is dropping and how you get so much more now then before ultimately support my overall point which is that things are getting cheaper when it comes to gaming and technology rather then getting more expensive.

I completely agree with you in regards to how affordable gaming is today compared to earlier. especially with how well cheap computers can run games now. I guess my definition of elite and some others might be different. The so-called elites I know spend their money on vacations in Europe, trips to the Caribbean, rent house boats on lakes and drop a few thousand dollars every year on a new TV.  The consoles and controllers can get a bit spendy, but if the family is patient, you can pick up things like God of War III for 15 dollars now and not fork out 60 bucks when it comes out. I mean with Steam, you can actually pick up a dozen newer games a year for less than 5 dollars each. None of that was available when I started gaming. Then you had to rent them, and they were pretty pricey to rent compared to now. You do have to be patient though, and that can be hard.  I mean the 360 arcade, lower version is hitting around what now, 150 USD,, and some of those are bundles which means gtg out of the box.

But like I said, inflation is a really nice tool, it just has this incredible weakness when it comes to things like technology. It's relavent in that your point was correct, imho, but inflation was not the reason, advances are. Sure, the wealthy are buying up TV's and theater type setups that make characters like mario the size of a small child, but the rest of us can pick up 32inch tvs and a console for a few hundred bucks too. That doesn't sound like wealthy need only apply to me.

It's a funny world where this...

... becomes an interesting topic.  I wonder how many of us are actually swayed by any of this stealing is ok because rot, tbh.  I think we all pretty much stick to our guns on this.  The "if there is no demo available, i steal and then buy" argument is silly.  Companies create demos to draw in folks that would like to try before they buy.  Stealing because a company hasn't created a demo is silly.  Nor have I met that one guy that steals all of his games and then buys if they are "good enough".  Ever.  Hell.  I love SP games.  I often play them and move on.  If I was stealing games, beat the SP in 10 hours, then I wouldn't buy it.  And I doubt anyone else would.  Just a rubbish argument that sounds ok to justify stealing, but rarely works out that way.  And so on.  Anyway, I'm in the camp of stealing is wrong.  Interested in a game but there is no demo?  Read the reviews and buy or pass based on that.  I don't know if the next car I purchase will be all its cracked up to be.  Perhaps I should steal it for a month and then decide if they can have my money for their property.  Maybe 1 month isn't good enough.  I'll try it out for a year and then decide.  Or if I'm buying a house.  Or considering adopting.  I'd love to try a $100 steak before I buy it, but if that's not an option, I guess I should steal it because folks weren't handing out samples.  Or blahblah.

glad to see most of you are talking about much more interesting things at least

If you buy a house that is not built correctly you have recourse options such as the court system. The same with a car, the dealer is responsible if your car is a lemon and you have options to fix the issue. If I order a $100 stake that tastes like crap, just try and make me pay for it, that's why you pay after unlike fast food.

If I buy a game that I am not happy with or does not work, too bad so sad, "you copied it and are a criminal so I don't have to do nothing". I bought EAs BF 2142 and made the mistake of using my ISPs email and when I moved and got a new ISP I could not remember the damn password I used and could not get it emailed (yes I will not do that again). To bad, buy it again because I can't even play single player without logging in. Even with the box, cd key, receipt and old email address. Well FU EA, the last dime you get from me. If I am treated as a criminal just by picking up the box it makes you think, do pirates actually go through all this crap, probably not.

EDIT: And I did only buy sins of a solar empire after trying a friends copy. If I cant try it, I WILL NOT BUY IT.