Piracy

Piracy. What can you say about it? It's so pervasive in today's electronic world. The reason this is on my mind is because a group of pirates on the internet have declared war on CthulhuTech and have decided that despite the hard work and personal money I've put into the project that everyone should have it for free.

You've probably heard it all before, but let me lay it out in simple terms that most pirates just don't get.

1. When you purchase something, you cast your vote with your dollars. That simply means that when you buy something, the retailers, suppliers, manufacturers, etc. all get the message that you like it and you want more of it. When you pirate something, no one in the entire marketplace knows that you like it. The more people pirate something they like, the less chance they have of getting more of it or of it staying around.

2. When you pirate something, you actually do hurt somebody. In my case, I am a small businessman. So small, in fact, that I and my partners do this part-time. We're not even making money off of it yet. So every copy of CthulhuTech you pirate is one copy closer to us being out of business. I put thousands of hours of my own free time into developing this world and system, not to mention thousands of my own hard-earned money. I don't relish the idea of you liking CthulhuTech, but thinking my effort and money aren't worth anything.

3. Pirates live in a world of justification. Justification is making something right so you can live with it, even if it isn't. Most pirates justify stealing by saying that they are sticking it to the man, that the gigantic companies they steal from won't feel the impact. What they fail to realize is that not everyone they steal from is a gigantic company. Some of them are people just like you and me, small business people with dreams of one day succeeding to the point where they can quit their day job and just do what they love. Piracy kills that and there's no amount of justification you can give that makes that okay.

4. Pirates most often fail to take responsibility for their actions. If you're a pirate and you really like something and that something goes away or that company goes out of business, you contributed to that. You didn't singularly cause it, but you cannot stick your head in the sand and pretend that you had nothing to do with it.

5. If you're the kind of pirate that thinks that you shouldn't have to pay for anything you can get for free and to hell with the people who are getting screwed, think of it this way. You go to work and work your butt off for a month. At the end of that month, your boss comes to you and tells you that he's not going to pay you because he doesn't think he should have to. How do you feel?

In short, please buy CthulhuTech if you want to own it, even if you illegally downloaded a copy to see if you liked it first. Otherwise, poof, CthulhuTech's gone.

And that's that. Getting off it now.