Margo wrote:You make the world you live in with your own attitudes and behaviors, so if you live in a crappy world where people steal and degrade that which is most dear to you, maybe it's because you think that's okay to do to someone else.
Oh, I would agree with this, but the question is... whose fault is this? The fault of the audience or the ones whose are creating it? I believe the answer is somewhere half way between the two. In many cases the customers are blamed for everything, usually for the poor sales, while the companies are used to ruin many things in general, but it's easier to blame the people or the creator instead of looking around in the company instead. The creator, the writer may come up with brilliant ideas if the publisher or the production company is ruining the product with their "brilliant" flash ideas or poor decisions. I've seen this many times, I even experienced it too with one of my stories where I was the writer, but I had the very last word in it, because everyone in the publisher company knew better how to create a world and tell a story. Yep, we've seen it in the end, who was right. Then the company and the publisher is blamed the pirates, while the poor sales came from the lack of quality, what is came from their own incompetence and decisions during the production.
The general problem is; it's easier to point always at the audience, blame them, but the source of the problems, even in piracy, used to come from a different side. If we're speaking about piracy, please make a difference between sides and sides as three sides are existing, not just two. Usually the third side is always washing their hands and blaming others, audience or the creator, while the problem is usually coming from the third side's own incompetence. But the audience know this and they're sharing their own experience with others. And in this case, the domino effect comes.
But, hey, it's convenient and you once got ''cheated" by someone else when you bought something and didn't like it and the publishing companies are evil and everyone does it and the writer should be on her belly licking your boots because you lowered yourself to read her writing anyway.
Same goes for the companies and publishers (Mostly for game and movie publishers). It's convenient to say, it's the fault of the audience, but they're the ones whose promised many wonderful things via their advertisements, then the product worth the 5% of it's true price, because it's not holding the promises at all. The problem is, the laws are protecting the companies, not the audience... otherwise many publisher companies, especially in the movie and gaming world would be out of business already.
What many forget nowadays, cheating the audience, the people with false promises is also thieving.
