Friday 4 March 2011

'Piracy is Not Theft' Says Minecraft Creator

Speaking during the closing session yesterday at the Independent Games Summit in San Fransisco, Minecraft developer Markus "Notch" Persson dismissed the notion that piracy is the same as stealing, or ‘looting’ as described by MPAA chief Chris Dodd.




“Piracy is not theft,” he explained to those at the Summit. “If you steal a car, the original is lost. If you copy a game, there are simply more of them in the world...There is no such thing as a ‘lost sale’” he added; “Is a bad review a lost sale? What about a missed ship date?”

Many people just can't get to grips with the idea that every illegal download does not represent a lost sale.  Plenty of downloaders are happy to pay the creator once they have seen that they like the product.

“If you just make your game and keep adding to it, the people who copyright infringed would buy it the next week,” Notch said.  And he's right - currently 1,469,513 (30.1%) people have paid for Minecraft.

4 comments:

  1. Great post, he makes an excellent point. I've always thought similarly that piracy was not lost sales, but rather the pirate would not have purchased it at all.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Notch is awesome, I absolutley love minecraft.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great,how could you find that,thank you for your sharing,
    cookie monster minecraft skin

    ReplyDelete