How much pirated Amiga software did you have?

[Ilwrath]

This poll probably should have been ordered:

None
A few
A good bit
A lot
Truckloads

Indeed, and I would have answered truckloads!  15 disks in one night would have been a slow night.  

I do believe Piracy doesn't hurt game sales nearly as much software vendors claim.

Everyone I know who won't pirate only buy 4-5 PC games a year and maybe a few more console games cause of the used prices they can get them at a Gamestop, etc.

My friends that do pirate - they have hundreds and eventually only end up really playing a few - and still buy 3-4 games a year cause they can't pirate on consoles easily or its a game in a series they always have bought. So we still spend about the same each year on games - they just monkey around with more than I do.

+1

Exactly.  I had thousands of games and programs I copied.  Of course, the few things that actually turned out to be good or useful I ended up purchasing, or purchasing the next version to.  Most of the productivity software I used on a routine basis was all legally purchased, and I'd almost always end up buying a game if I really liked it and it was available in NTSC.  

Most of the pirated stuff that wasn't replaced with legitimate versions was stuff I either tried and didn't like or tried and liked, but didn't have a real use for.  It spent most of its time collecting dust.  Still does, as a matter of fact.  It's all stuff I never would have purchased had piracy not been available.  

In fact, I'd go as far as to say piracy drove software sales.  I'd probably never have purchased any of the Final Writer series had I not downloaded a copy of it and found out how much better it was than the free Textcraft that came with my A500.  I probably wouldn't have bought Wings, either, as the box and reviews didn't come close to capturing how fun the game was.  If I hadn't have pirated Worms, would I have jumped with glee at the chance to buy Worms: DC?  Probably not....

[Ilwrath]

That's the idea with demo versions which I could only get with (british) magazines, which themselves cost more than 25 times a single blank floppy, *and* you coudn't randomly pick any game but was limited to whatever the mag shipped with.
Therefore as you can see, pirated games (and a few apps) were effectively demo versions for me.

Again, a great point.  Back then you were limited to cover disks for demos, and those were expensive and not always very representative of the final game.  If you wanted to try out a game, you pretty much had to pirate it.

I could easily flash the DVD on my X360 to play copied disks.  It's a trivial hack.  I haven't bothered, though, because there is no need.  They have a marketplace to freely download accurate game demos.  If I want to check out a title, it's right there.  It doesn't expire, vanish, cripple my system with goofy copy protection schemes, or any other nonsense.  I download an evaluation, and it stays on my system until I either buy the game or decide I'd rather have the HD space to try out something else.  That's fair.  

I don't buy games at a greater rate when I don't pirate versus when I do, though.  The number of games I buy doesn't decrease when I download more of them.  

It's not a lost sale unless you have all of the following:
1) The ability to buy it.
2) The desire to buy it.
3) Then you didn't buy it after getting a pirate copy.  

That's the only way it's a lost sale.  Most of the "piracy == lost sales == platform killer" argument folks neglect the fact that nobody would have bought that crap game had it not been free.  9/10ths of the stuff I had probably wasn't worth the cost of the blank floppy it was on.  The fact was, I was just to lazy to sort, reformat and relabel that floppy, so I just bought more.   :lol:

[Ilwrath]

What happens if that product/technology or parts thereof are then used in some hitherto unknown technology that ends making billions?

That's basically what Disney has done.  They've taken stories from the public domain, and made animated films out of them, creating bazillions in revenue by scavenging others' work and adapting it to a new medium.

So, traditionally, that was quite acceptable.  The intent and purpose of copyright is to encourage development, not ensure perpetual profit.  This point has been completely perverted by the big media companies that enjoy making perpetual profits.