Digital Theft - Does It Harm the Economy?

[DonRocks]

This warning comes at the beginning of some movies:

Piracy Is Not a Victimless Crime

For more information on how digital theft harms the economy, visit: www.iprcenter.gov

which takes you to the home page, which says nothing about how digital theft harms the economy.

I can see it removing the desire to create things (which harms the economy), but does pirating music (for example) harm the economy? I suppose if people from other countries pirate films, music, etc., it could; otherwise, constantly paying this-and-that for things results in a transfer of wealth from one individual to a corporation, and I'm not certain that harms the economy. Yes, it's immoral, and yes, it's illegal, but does it really "harm the economy?"

I have no answer to this, but thought I'd throw it out there. Before you rip into me, read the last sentence of the previous paragraph again.

Don't get me wrong: I'm all for enforcement (hell, people have stolen my intellectual work from this website *many* times, without giving me any credit - it pissed me off for a long time, but I've learned to take it as a compliment), but when a 14-year-old shares a song with a friend on their iPhones, and says, "I know it's supposed to be wrong, but I have no problem doing this," are you really supposed to give them a lecture about how they should cough up their money to a multi-billion dollar company? I mean, there's theory, and there's reality.

[Tweaked]

When in Bangkok years ago one of the shopping malls had a floor that was just kiosks sell bootlegged stuff, video games, music, TV shows, movies.  Browse through a binder of 100s of movies and TV shows, place an order, pick it up an hour later.  I picked up a DVD set of The Wire Season 5 before it was even released on DVD, they had packaged up episodes copied straight from HBO.  The sellers had impressive knowledge of what they were selling, like what was copied well, what was crap.

On one hand the efficiency was pretty damn impressive, on the other hand it was like, wow these guys are ripping off everything.