• TCB13@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    If piracy is decriminalized, what’s to stop someone from setting up a store and completely undermining digital distribution?

    Nothing, and that’s kind of the point. However due to the fungible and reproduceable nature of digital media one of those stores won’t last long because it will get quickly overrun by free alternatives. It would just apply pressure into “legal” platforms be behave better.

    To be fair, I would even agree that piracy for personal usage / not for profit should be okay, while privacy for profit could be a crime. I think that’s a more reasonable approach and mostly what happens today.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Why would people buy from the legal platform if there’s no consequences to using the free platform that’s just as convenient? It’s really not hard to make a platform that distributes a game, look at Heroic, which is completely volunteer run.

      The reason people use services like Steam and GOG over piracy is because piracy requires more work due to legal restrictions. If you legalize it, game studios would respond by putting games entirely (or at least a substantial portion) server side, so there’s no way to back up your media. That’s absolutely not what I want.

      I think it’s important to keep piracy illegal, but drastically reduce the penalty so individuals don’t get completely screwed if they get caught. That would increase pressure on companies to make their games more accessible and reduce the likelihood that a company would sue someone, but still gives an option if piracy gets out of control.