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Comment by forrestthewoods | Hacker News Reader

> at an agreeable price

Piracy is about wanting stuff for free. Nothing more and nothing less.

iTunes has 99% of pirated content. You can start streaming damn near any movie or TV show you want with about 4 clicks. It takes less than 30 seconds. But it costs money.

Piracy isn't a convenience problem. It's a not wanting to spend money for things problem.

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I've built up quite a digital collection on iTunes, all purchased more than 4 years ago when I realised my investment in content was completely locked to the iTunes platform, with no legal means to transfer the purchased content to other platforms. For some movies I paid the same price as a Blu-ray disk, for lower quality and vendor lock-in. I refuse to invest any further money into content that I am only legally allowed to access on one vendors platform, so I purchase Blu-ray versions and keep a digital backup available that can be played on vendor strategy tax unencumbered software such as Emby and Kodi. Itunes, Google Play, Amazon Movies, non of these are viable options.

>Piracy isn't a convenience problem. It's a not wanting to spend money for things problem.

Except the likes of iTunes and Steam have shown that if you provide an affordable, reliable and convenient distribution channel, people will flock to it over the napster/kazaa/torrent alternatives.

Then why do some people currently pirate and spend money on things?

Because the things they pirate cost more than they feel it's worth. So they just take a free copy instead.

But that doesn't answer my question. If "Piracy is about wanting stuff for free. Nothing more and nothing less", then why would someone who can get it for free choose not to?

Because they find the price agreeable and wish to reward the rights holder. If they found the price disagreeable then they pirated despite wishing the content holder to be rewarded.

But your still not answering the question. If your statement is true: "Piracy is about wanting stuff for free. Nothing more and nothing less" then they wouldn't pay for something if they ever had the opportunity to avoid doing so.

Nah

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