Then perhaps piracy is an indicator that the pricing is considered too high, above the threshold at which a potential customer decides to either not buy it or pirate it.
The question then is how the ability to pirate affects that "reasonable price" threshold, amongst other hard to quantify effects of piracy.
Then perhaps piracy is an indicator that the pricing is considered too high, above the threshold at which a potential customer decides to either not buy it or pirate it.
For some customers it is absolutely too high so they resort to piracy. For others, it is the correct price or even too low. In a perfect world, the seller could use your income to determine price (or some other even better metric for what you are willing to pay) and charge everyone differnet amounts. Very wealthy people would pay huge amounts, impoverished people would pay very low amounts, maybe even nothing.
The question then is how the ability to pirate affects that "reasonable price" threshold, amongst other hard to quantify effects of piracy.
I imagine it pushes the price down slightly, but who knows if the record companies are acting rationally (pricewise) or could even predict the correct price they should charge to max profit. (I imagine they have some very smart people modeling pricing, but models can only get you so close).
If we assume that the researchers in question are in fact intentionally misleading and misrepresenting the facts then yes, that is alarming.
But what does that have to do with being American? Pocketing money from industry at the expense of public health and safety would be disappointing given any nationality.
He means as opposed to having foreign researchers putting out the claims, who could conceivable have less of an ethics barrier, since it's "not their land".
Still agree with you though - pretty shameful if true.
Due to the higher friction of trading items in Diablo 2 as compared to that of D3 (auction house) there's an assumption that the drop rate of quality items in Diablo 2 was higher than in D3. Further, in D3 the items are a lot more liquid due to the ease of exchanging on the auction house and so there's a feeling of instead focusing solely on collecting gold and then choosing an item on the auction house rather than enjoying "slot machine" mechanics.
The question then is how the ability to pirate affects that "reasonable price" threshold, amongst other hard to quantify effects of piracy.