What do you think about this? You buy a game new and out of the $60 you paid, the Developers only get $7 and if you sell it to Gamestop, the Developers get nothing from the next guy that buys it. A lot of people call it "legal piracy" because the developers don't make any money.But what about used Video Cards and CPUs?
This guy goes too much in the semantics of the phrase "legal piracy" and he says it can't be piracy because it's not digital, it's physical therefor, it's not piracy and it's not illegal. My take on this is, he's not buying physical property, he's buying a tradeable license to use intellectual property in a form of a disc. The same goes for a Record, it's not Digital, but it can be pirated and just because it's legit, that doesn't mean it's right or it's wrong just because it's illegal, just illegal.
Look at Systemshock. There is a finite number of copies and once they're gone, they're gone. While it would be legal to go on Ebay and buy it used for $100, the developer's not making money and even if it's licensed to GoG for $5, Lookingglass Studios don't exist anymore and the money won't go to the developers.
The thing is, in our grandparent's time, when you bought something, you were actually considered by the law to be the legal owner of that product. If you paid money for a product, you could sell it, modify it, basically do anything you want with it except create an exact copy and sell it on an industrial scale. Now, if you buy something, the terms of use will generally prevent you from legally doing any of those things. If you violate them, you get the shit sued out of you. Just look at what happened to the guy who cracked the ps3. If you pay money for something, you should have the right to sell it to whoever you want, or to modify it for personal use, and/or tell other people how to modify it. To say otherwise is, in my view, saying that you are not buying, but rentthe, the product.
When pirating a game, none of the companies involved in making it / making it available to the public, get anything. When buying a used game, the same thing happens. With that logic, the two things should be comparable. Except for the moral issues.
Judging from the rumours about the PS4 and next Xbox both having protection against playing used games, I'd say the companies distributing the games doesn't care how people "rip them off", just that they're not getting any money out of it.
There's no doubt in my mind that if you like something, you should support the people behind it. There's obviously different ways of supporting a company, but I'm talking about finacially supporting them. With that said, if the game you want is no longer available through legal channels, I can't see any moral problems in pirating it, compared to buying it used.
Swapping games, buying used and borrowing a game from a friend has been around long before the whole "pirates are destroying the entertainment industry" thing and that didn't stop the evolution of gaming, so despite my take on supporting the developers, I personally feel that buying used is alright.