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In comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic pc games <pcgame...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> "John" story
> John enjoys very much PC Games, he buys them all, one day a friend of
> his asked him to lend him a game he has cause he enjoyed very much the
> demo and he accepted it.
> By lending his game to a friend "John" reduced that games sale by one
> unit cause his friend should have instead bought his own unit

Assuming John doesn't retain a copy on his computer while lending the game 
to his friend, this isn't illegal or piracy.  It's the same as lending 
your friend a book.

According to your slant, we should arrest the libraries for lending out 
books and movies - therefore depriving countless 1000s of revenue.


> "James" story
> James enjoys very much PC Games, he buys them all, but one day he
> decided to try out the 2nd hand market in one of his games in which he
> already made a backup for himself, so he sold one of his games in the
> used 2nd hand market to another PC Gamer
> By selling in the used 2nd hand "James" reduced that games sale by one
> unit cause the buyer should have instead bought it new

Again, so long as James does not retain any copies of the game he sells, 
this is still legal.  After all you are allowed to sell a book you bought.

If James bought a game, made a copy, and then sold the original, then yes 
he has pirated the  game because there are now 2 copies in distribution 
but only one of them was paid for.

> "Jim" story
> Jim enjoys very much PC Games, but he decided that he would steal
> instead of buying PC Games, so he downloaded from an illegal site a
> commercial game
> By downloading an illegal copy "Jim" reduced that games sale by one
> unit cause the should have instead bought it

> Its clear the only pirate among the 3 is Jim, but at the end who did
> reduce sales for PC Games? All 3

No, not really.  Both James and John bought 1 copy and lent/sold their 
license of that copy to a friend.  In the end, the number of copies sold 
remains the same.

You could replace the word "game" in James and John's story with any other 
item - book, sweater, audio CD - it doesn't matter.  You are allowed to 
lend/transfer ownership of items, provided you observe the caveats I 
pointed out above.

> So what I'm trying to say is not only pirates reduce sales
> And don't forget the big problem in PC Games is exactly declining
> sales
> Using the used 2nd hand market and lending PC Games can be as damaging
> as piracy
> In practice even if "John" and "James" don't pirate they are reducing
> sales as much as "Jim" the pirate is
> So please next time you intend to use the Used 2nd hand market or lend
> a game to a friend think twice, think about PC Games declining and
> every sale unit counting
> Thanks and PC Games will appreciate

Oh give it a break.  Console games have had a much larger, well 
established 2nd hand market since the days of the NES - something that PC 
games never really had.  Despite this, console game publishers are doing 
better than ever.  Yeah, sure, they'd probably love to get rid of the 2nd 
hand market and make everyone buy a copy from them, but they also that's 
not going to happen.  Heck, Sony even filed for a patent on some sort of 
mechanism which would "lock" a game disc to a specific console - a kind of 
Divx For Playstation, if you will.  They haven't tried to implement it, 
however, because they know full well that it'd chase away all their 
customers - including those that buy new games.

If anything, allowing places like GameStop to carry used PC games would 
actually be a GOOD thing to the PC gaming industry as it would get more 
people to play PC games.  It would give people a way to sell off games 
they were done with, and purchase different titles.

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