[conanbatt]

The thing is that what you believe is worth paying for is proportional to the ease to find pirated content.

In argentina, people pay netflix and share accounts between friends, and some play hbo go for GoT, but thats it. In the U.S., its very rate to see pirated TV.

A sandwich might be worth 5 dollars to you, but if there are free sandwiches next to it, you will think "I would pay it if it were worth it"

[ajuc]

I don't think it's that simple. In Poland in early 90s everybody pirated everything. I'm not overstating it. Only businesses bought legal software, everybody else pirated. Piracy was only a crime since 1992 IIRC.

And it wasn't easy - you had to copy dozens of floppy disks, often people copied each disk 2 times, because out of 20 floppies one is bound to have read errors, if not more. It took ages.

But the prices were crazy - a game costed 60-120 PLN and people earned like 700 PLN per month.

Then piracy got much easier thanks to CD recorders and internet - but it changed nothing, because you can't go over 100% :)

Since that time piracy only got easier thanks to broadband, dvd-writers, usb pendrives, ssds, yet legal computer market in Poland increased many times and piracy is in decline. Mostly because of increasing salaries, and extras included with legal copies.

[conanbatt]

Again, talking about piracy and fairness should be a moot argument. Something being expensive doesnt give you the right to consume something without the permission of the one who made it.

Think of this in terms of source code. If you wanted the source code for facebook, facebook might sell it to you (for billions ofc), but you cant pay for it. That doesnt give you the right to steal it.

Its just too easy to do. Its a basic microeconomics argument. But piracy has not only risks, but costs, and hence it does allow the product to be sold at a higher price. It constricts supply.

[ajuc]

> Something being expensive doesnt give you the right to consume something without the permission of the one who made it.

Of course it doesn't (except in some special cases, but that's another debate, and doesn't concern games - see life saving drugs for example).

But the discussion was about DRM and whether they work - IMHO they don't, because the main reason behind piracy isn't accessibility, but too high (price/perceived value). So - limiting accessibility of piracy isn't going to stop it.

Also it would have worked by now if it worked at all.

Also also :) EU did a study in 2013 which found that piracy doesn't really hurt sales, because most people who pirated X and haven't bought it later - wouldn't have bought it anyway. https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2017/09/displacement_s...

[conanbatt]

Im damn sure it works because if piracy were not punished, popcorn time would swallow the entire consumer market, much like it has in countries like Argentina and the netherlands. The barrier of installing a VPN adds an expense higher than paying for netflix, making it unappealing.

> EU did a study in 2013 which found that piracy doesn't really hurt sales, because most people who pirated X and haven't bought it later - wouldn't have bought it anyway.

I haven't read that paper, but from an economic standpoint, this is still not enough to prove what people would have bought if they had access to piracy. Again, look at popcornTime. If people were fined in Argentina like they are in the US, I assure you netflix would surge in subscriptions.

[ajuc]

I have no idea what popcorn time is, and there are next to no fines for piracy in my country. Well, in theory there are, but in practice there aren't.

[oneweekwonder]

In Australia, certain content is banned, so pirating or acquiring it via other means is nececery.

I also want to point out another problem in a lot of countries is bandwidth. Limits of 20GB is not unheard-off. But GTA5, 65GB. So easier to copy a couple of rar files on usb and sneakernet it around.

[conanbatt]

I wouldn't call watching TV a necessity, but sure, no doubt that restricted access causes piracy.

Its fundamentally a problem of business model. You can't charge differential pricing based on what the customer is willing or able to do, so one way or another you compromise revenue, or content, or something else.

Naturally as this has progressed with time, the shows themselves started adding ads within the show to prevent things like this.