This is incorrect. While you may not be giving them money (at the start) there's other factors to it.

First factor, obviously we don't have infinite money, so one has to be picky and choosy of what media you purchase. But back when Napster became a thing for a while, yes a lot of big name stuff was getting downloaded, but so was a lot of little stuff. The bands that had no chance of being noticed suddenly got cult followings, and their userbase and sales increased significantly, which they never would have had.

Personally back 1995-2000 i downloaded from mp3.com, which had free music up. I found one of my favorite musicians who does game music, Bjorn Lynne. It wasn't until a decade or two later i felt i had money to spend and bought 10 CD's from him at once, directly from him, giving him far more money than if i bought one or two CD's through the normal channels at the time.

If something is good, you are far more likely to seek out and repurchase it than if it's a big mystery and you don't know if CD or movie is any good or not. Had i never heard or gotten a portion of his music for free, i certainly wouldn't have ever purchased from him.

On the other hand, if you add DRM and make it so you get a terrible experience from something you got, you're almost guaranteed never to purchase that product.

Let's not forget, for decades you have VHS and tape, so i could record a song from the radio or a movie on TV, have the content and never purchase it, or borrow movies or books from the public library.

Is like Skaarj in Unreal Tournament 4 rather texture or is it some kind of high poly 3D model hidden somewhere in the game files?
Another how is it when someone will make unofficial,fanmade properly made Jazz Jackrabbit 3D high poly models I am not able to download some game assets?
Like right here.
https://blenderartists.org/t/jazz-jackrabbit-free-rigged-textured-animated-model-new-logic/452787
When I’m logging into Mediafire each time to download such game asset file it redirects me to one of my own Mediafire accounts. Is it like Epic Games lawyers took it down due to DMCA,copyrights infringement or what?
Does it mean that those computer games/video games as modern entertainment should be considered as public domain or not…etc.?

You're lacking imagination if you think you have to go "old timey" to find a non-electronic hobby to do even in a small apartment. The only one shackling you to one type of entertaining pass-time is yourself. You don't *need* games or other entertainment media, you just think you do.

In my case it actually was Zak McKracken. I hope I got the absolution nevertheless.

It's not incorrect. What you wrote in no way refutes the fact that you're not entitled to experience an entertainment good for free to deprive the creative content creator of revenue. If you can't pay for it, forgo the experience, or save up to buy the good. Like with everything else. It doesn't matter that it's non-perishable infinite supply good - you've placed a non-zero value and price on that good that you desire and thus simply you are depriving the creative content creator of that amount.

Now, that amount might be a lot less than the retail price, as it's a value you've deemed appropriate, but without the ability to get the good for free without repercussions and with ease, you would have to buy the good to experience it. And that is where your pro-piracy logic fails - the market cannot correct on its own this failure - so there's a clear loss of revenue. You can argue until you're blue in the face, but it's a non-zero amount, and though we will never know the extent and precise amount of lost sales revenue without an alternate reality device and a golden experiment, it is certainly substantial based on some devs' self-reported piracy rates in the past.

Yes, this is the nature of a market economy. Bartering furs was fun though, maybe we can go back to that period in time. Also plumbing is overrated.

This is the anecdotal ethical pirate that apparently counters any loss in sales due to piracy. But it's just that, anecdotal. How many copies of games did the "ethical" pirate not buy, instead enjoy the game fully without paying a cent? Probably many many more than the few games they decided to buy years later at the bargain bin.

Which leads me to my next point - the unpredictability of the long-tail of sales revenue. What impact do you think you have for the creation of creative content, when you wait 4 years after release to buy a game at the bargain bin? What impact did your purchase have on the future of that dev studio, and their projects? Could they budget their next game based on the revenue you brought them? I put it to you, that you do not contribute much at all to the gaming industry with this mode of operating. And that's fine, it's a free world, we don't all have the means, and in these tough economic times we save everywhere we can. Especially frivolous entertainment goods. But to be under the illusion that it actually contributes to the creation of games you enjoy - well, it just doesn't work that way.

I stand by my original statement - everything else is just crying about not getting a free lunch.

This is like saying 'how many copies of movie at a theater did you not do because you bought the DVD and watched it with 12 family members at home'. Or 'How many seat tickets weren't sold because some kids could peek from the side of the bleachers at a football game?'.

If it's not a physical product it has different qualities to it. It's not like buying hotdogs where 'how many hot dogs weren't sold because everyone took a picture on their phone and ate that instead of buying one'. At the end of the day nothing is physically stolen or deprived. It's a lot harder to make a case you stole someone's work, especially like the eagles band with millions of dollars in their pockets annoyed someone might be listening to Hotel California without having bought their record for it.

And naturally i must be a so-called pirate (and i don't own a boat and nowhere near a river or ocean...) because i listen to songs on the radio without ever paying. Or listening to them from youtube, or pandora, or a plethora of other sources. God forbid a song plays on the overhead while i'm in a store shopping! Oh my!

In business there's the 80/20 rule, and the square root rule. The 80/20 says 80% of the work is being done by 20% of the code/people. And the square root rule, says half the money you make is coming from the square root key number of people. For youtube videos 1/10th of the people will put an up/down vote, and 1/100 will likely do a comment reply. For entertainment I'd say it's probably the square root; something like every 1 million people, you will have 1,000 that are willing to pay for it. No amount of whining is probably going to change that, you just gotta make good content.

Course you also have companies like cable companies and Hollywood that want you to pay out the nose (They want $100+/mo or more for hundreds of channels when you just want a couple specific channels) for their content rather than be like the food sector and squeak by at a few percent profit and let it run smoothly and happily.

I'll go back to what i said earlier. Either make copies abundant and cheap (definitely cheap) where it's easier to just go buy the CD/DVD whatever, Or you gotta increase everyone's disposable income by a great amount so they can feel like they can justify letting said money go. I don't really see other options working. Though on youtube just making the content free certainly works too; At least until they decide to change that and pull the rug from under you.
Electric hobbies while very common are fairly new, we're only talking the last 40 something years since computers have entered the mainstream and all that goes with it. Doing things more with our hands is probably better for us, be it making pottery or woodworking and making our own wooden bowls, doing our own clothes, etc.

Like sex, you DO need it, it's just not something you need to keep your heart going as in food/water/air. But it is a need, often to challenge your mind and keep yourself from going to utter boredom.

Not sure what guilt you're talking about. Bjorn Lynne and others on mp3.com encouraged you to download, and the more downloads affected bonuses for them as well as discounts for buying CD's online.

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Hmmm a third option on things is to make content free. Consider, what if all movies/shows/games were free. I'm not saying no-one would get money, but the quality may be a bit lower. Collectively the MIAA and MPAA would have to get the stick out of their asses and leave people the hell alone, but SD quality content could be free. Collectively find a quality that's somewhere in the middle, fairly small and satisfies what most people may want. Especially with people using phones, a 640x360 video at 24fps 600Kbit video/audio combination and a 20min show could be a mere 50-60Mb per episode. That's a lot of content. But when you want the full HD or full quality, well then you gotta get the physical disc. I'd be surprised if most people weren't happy with that.

As for games, I think the textures they use are already too damn big. But lowering the models and textures of said games to SD quality (runs well on 1024x768) would greatly reduce the size. Probably disable all the more fancy filters too so tons of games would take on a Xbox360 fixed lighting look.

Music, i'm seeing 128Kbit AAC on youtube for CD quality and it's 'medium', so that seems well enough.

Well there are plenty of decent things to play or watch for under $20 full price, and there are usually a number of sales at various places. But yeah, inflation can be a real bitch PITA :\

I was forced somewhat to be frugal growing up, and now it's become a habit.
(partially because of budget and also partially so I can save for other things)

Aside: I miss when games(even without grinding/grind time or doing side quests and such) could last one for a decent amount of time. Now we have AAA FPS/RPG that are often mainly MP and which last a fraction of what they used to.

Based on that logic, there is no justification for anyone to consume any entertainment media period.

I was forced to think frugally at 5. Not because family was poor or anything, but a life experience that made me realize i couldn't just beg for more money and it was a limited resource; So that's shaped my spending habits (although they've relaxed a lot since then).
Exactly.

Or to have money, or have anything other than a roof and the minimum to cook food and a pot to piss in. You don't need cars, you don't need books, you don't need the internet. You don't need computers, electricity, relationships, government, pets, hobbies, alcohol, cigarettes or cigars, music, or anything else.

I mean.. you can live on bugs right? Why have anything else?

It is not a need. Sex is not a need. Entertainment is a luxury, the very definition of "not a need."

Mhmmm... Like sight sound touch taste and smell aren't 'needs' either. It isn't a 'need' in the sense to keep your heart going. But it's a need to keep your sanity going.

I dare you to go into a deprivation chamber for, oh 24 hours and then tell me you don't 'need' any of these things. Assuming you still have your mind.

Exhibit One
Exhibit Two

Not sure i'd follow those, though i'll glance it over later. I recall being told 'needs' are which you can't live without: food, water, air... and a roof over your head.

But that has a lot of assumptions added to it. So i append 'to keep your heart going' or to be technically alive for simplicity.

Tis Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which supports what you were saying earlier.
(i.e. needs going beyond just the physical/physiological)

What a weird ongoing discussion. My input:

Some obvious facts:
- A game being too expensive is not a valid excuse to pirate
- A game being crap is not a valid excuse to pirate
- The publisher/developer being super rich is not a valid excuse to pirate
- Fear of missing out on the cultural zeitgeist is not a valid excuse to pirate
- Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is outdated pop-sci

Some more nuance:
- I'd love to live in a society where art and entertainment is created for its own sake, and creators are supported in their living by the government, but we don't live in such a world now
- It might not be the exact same as stealing something physical, but you would still be depriving a creator of their due (feel free to couple this with "The publisher/developer being super rich is not a valid excuse to pirate" above)
- I pirated when I was a student and living in a country at a time when buying original games was not really possible (physical availability and then online payment methods)
- I kinda regret that now, because while I can buy those same games now to try to "make up for it", those companies have long collapsed or swallowed up by the likes of EA
- Still, if I hadn't done that, I probably would never had had a chance to experience those games.