[QUOTE="Grammaton-Cleric"][QUOTE="paul999"] Why pay when you can get it free?
YourChaosIsntMe
Why work an honest job when you can break into somebody else's home, shove a gun in their face, and take with ease what they have worked so hard to earn?
The vast majority of crime is predicated upon the notion of eschewing effort and hard work and rather stealing from those who possess such ethics.
Basically, criminals are parasitic organisms who feed off productive members of society.
You're going down a slippery-slope there. You make a connection between something which is considered illegal due to cultural and economic circumstances and "the vast majority of crime." One of the problems with law is the ingrained nature of law theory in a given society, especially one in which the primary concern is capital gain. While a couple of our peers referred to the exploitative nature of the entertainment industry from the 50's to the 90's, I don't believe that addresses the entire issue because it focuses on us - people in places like England or the U.S. who generally have the income to afford consumer products. You have to consider the fact that the vast majority of piracy, especially in the video game industry, occurs worldwide where many products are not widely available or have exorbitant price tags.
Most crime is predicated upon the notion that no other option exists. Your disposition is one that is exclusively held by the privilaged members of society; crime is not that simplistic, though it appears to be when your grass is greener.
The situation isn't as black and white as you would like it to be...
Actually, most crime really is that simplistic, even after decades of socio-economic theories being espoused and pondered and used as some sort of feeble justification for criminality. The grey areas that some cling to, those precious little theories of economic hardships that forgive moral transgressions by overcomplicating the issues at hand, really are ethereal in nature and barely worth the paper they've been printed on. Such theories make the people who employ them feel enlightened but when such theories are actually applied to a realistic construct, they fall apart in the face of humanity's sheer ugliness and base selfishness.
Now, I'm well aware that copyright laws in many nations are very different than here in the states so obviously, in a place where people have no concept of such laws, calling it a crime really isn't accurate or even fair. But that wasn't really the point of this developer's inquiry or the point of this discussion. Everyone knows that in most third world nations and even some more industrialized places, U.S. and European copyright doesn't extend or protect media and there is no expectation of protection. The issue here is why do members of what you call the "privileged society" opt to take for free what they should be purchasing. The issue of piracy is rampant here in the U.S. despite availability through legal channels of distribution.
The truth is that people take what they want because it's free and there are no consequences. It's easier to steal something than to spend money on it, which is why movies, games and music continue to be traded illegally online, costing their respective industries millions.
As to the notion that all crime is predicated upon a lack of options, that's politically correct nonsense. People have choices and generally know when they are doing something wrong. We can sit here for days and wax intellectual about all the variables and causations that can influence criminality but ultimately, people make choices and those choices, when they entail criminal actions, are usually motivated by selfish gain. Of course there are exceptions and sometimes those exceptions are glaring and make us reconsider the very nature of crime but ultimately, most criminal actions are motivated by base and selfish rationales, rather it be theft of goods and money or the rape of a woman or child.
Your empathetic stance is even harder to swallow when you consider that we are actually discussing the theft of non-essential goods. People don't require videogames to live and prosper yet I've continued to hear others justify theft due to a lack of availability or excessive pricing. Frankly, such logic is more a symptom of our era and indicative of the apathetic manner in which so many people now choose to live their lives: with a shrug and a flimsy bit of justification for amoral behavior. This isn't Victor Hugo's pre-revolution France and these thefts are not the equivalent of a stolen loaf of bread. People don't need a copy of Zelda or Half Life to maintain their existence.
I can agree with you that the issue of crime isn't always black and white but in that same breath I'd assert it's rarely as complicated and grey as you are proposing. You call me privileged despite the fact that I came from a blue collar, working class family and put myself through college to become something more. I'm currently working in the public service as a teacher and while I won't pretend that my salary isn't decent I'm hardly flying out to Paris on the weekends to my villa. I deal with young adults from various socio-economic strata and to be completely honest, it's the kind of grey area mentality you are asserting here that so often gives these kids leave to be mediocre human beings.
I guess the bottom line is that enlightenment must be tempered by common sense because theories and charts and statistics simply won't hold up out there in the big empty of the real world.
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