(I would argue in terms of importance, ethics > crime)

Plagiarize a paper in college, you have caused no real loss but still been unethical. Say you knew the topic very well and could have done the work yourself, you just plagiarized because you were lazy to get around the whole you harmed yourself argument.

Like stonemetal alluded to, in a pretty esoteric sense you are harming yourself by bringing yourself into disrepute.. but that is just quibbling. Also I guess the 'scientific' method employed in marking papers is as a proof which you have not given. Though you may have done the groundwork it does not automatically follow that you are able to reliably produce the required results. You may also then be bringing the school into disrepute... but, probably not the central issue here.

I don't agree that EA's reward is diminished UNLESS people who would have otherwise bought these games did not (which I would then absolutely regard as stealing) and ASIDE from the very real argument about server time (which I would argue is a separate instance of theft).

I don't think the social contract argument holds much beyond the idea of patronage ie. I have a duty to support the content producer, but no such duty to allow him to profit. That is arbitrage, I may find it worth my while to allow it, but I have no duty to support it. In abstract Kant-ian terms (thanks for the link, jogged my memory of all those philosophy subjects I studied way back when) if all the world rejected arbitrage people would only make things that were really valued (in real terms, some over-production allows for innovation of course.. things are never so simple).

In fact, in the OP, he mentioned that on some boards people were justifying their actions by saying that they were taking back some of the money EA had taken from them over the years. This could be read as taking back the profits, or the arbitrage, which they no longer felt were justified given EA's continued mistreatment of their custom. (or, of course could be read as a petty way to make themselves feel ok about stealing).

The same deprivation occurs here. EA's reward for publishing these games is reduced or removed because people acquired them when the "door was unlocked".

I do not know enough about formal ethics to express my point here, but I would look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative under Perfect Duty to show how the concept of piracy doesn't hold up under the Categorical Imperative.

As dkokelly points out, this cannot be thought of as lost revenue. The vast majority of games taken here would never have been bought otherwise, and it is unlikely that any of these games will be devalued by having a wider audience. So it is spurious to describe this as simply stealing.

EA has a history of disrespecting their customers' privacy, security, payments, and computers, as well as (as the op mentions) questionable ethics. They don't seem to value their customers except as a cash cow to be milked to death. This is a message, an imperfect, impure, but pretty bloody strong retributive message. To draw a long bow, think LA riots.

But still, does that make it okay? I just think each person needs to assess that for themselves. It certainly has a ring of just desserts about it. Speaking for myself, it would depend on my motives. I would put that if the gamers are more interested in getting a positive response from EA than they are in free games, I would suggest they protest by dumping their EA games in an online equivalent of a big bonfire.. 4chan maybe :|

But I would agree that a more ethically clear-cut channel could be actually more effective - but just not because it is more ethically clear-cut. if they really want a positive response from EA, rather than just to protest (or steal), they need to publicly and loudly stop buying EA games.

Google didn't create all that wealth. They took a large part of that wealth from other advertising companies - primarily newspapers. And that money came from companies which in turn came from consumers. A good part of the wealth of companies is from arbitrage, monetising previously non-tradable items and digging stuff up - you know, externalities. A good portion from consumers is intergenerational. Very little actually comes from wealth creation.

Wealth is for all practical purposes, finite. This does not mean it is fixed. As a previous commenter pointed out, global economic growth is increasing at 3-4%.. at least some small portion of this is due to wealth creation rather than the monetisation thing. Understand also that monetisation usually transfers wealth rather than creates it, but sometimes can actually reduce wealth overall (take say, tobacco companies as a non-controversial example.. a controversial, though equally true, example might be BP or Shell).

Then you start asking yourself, if wealth is largely finite.. and some companies are making money hand over fist, then surely someone must be losing out? Why exactly do you think there are people living around the world who cannot afford good healthcare or clean water? You think they are just lazy? You actually believe all that BS in the doco you watched?

It also amazes me when people point out how generous US companies and people are in philanthropy - generally 1-2% of profit - while completely turning a blind eye to the very low levels of tax they pay. The democratic-capitalist-welfare state has a bigger positive impact worldwide to population health than all the charities put together, and it can be cheaper to run.

And another thing, you think google giving the doctors 500k is actually significant? In addition to the $400m / 80% figures already pointed out, think about the individual contributions - peoples life work. Also from wikipedia, in 07 there were 26,000 professionals who helped MSF. I don't know if you are aware, but people who work for charities don't get paid as much.. and that is if they are not just volunteering their time. Say 26,000 x 10% pay cut x ave wage (in aus dollars with aus wages this would be about $130m, you can adjust elsewhere if you like).

130 million a year in wealth donations from ordinary people.

I am all for wealth creation, which I think was the crux of the OP - if you are not contributing value to people's lives, you are not creating wealth, just taking it from someone else. And I don't discount the efforts of the people you mention. I think companies like google have helped in other ways with more impact than just their cash. Just want you to see these efforts in context, and maybe think a bit deeper. Because it is a very long rabbit hole.

And because it irritates me.

"A surprising number of people retain from childhood the idea that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world. There is, in any normal family, a fixed amount of money at any moment. But that's not the same thing."

That is a great essay, I've read it several times. I particularly appreciated the how he points out what money is and what it isn't. I bought this course on Economics http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.asp... (sometimes you can check it out from the library) and listened to it in my car over the course of a couple of months. Dr Taylor has a very easy to listen to delivery for a lecturer. And it really helped illustrate how the economy both works and how it can be reasoned about effectively.

I can't fly around Africa in a bush plane and give out medical advice, I can build a successful business here and then fund a doctor who volunteers to do that. If I'm smart and thoughtful I would look at how much solid humanitarian work is funded by folks in the US, and I would note that there is more funding going into humanitarian aid from the US than any other country in the world [1], and while it did take a hit during the Great Recession it is recovering. And if I was smart and thoughtful I would know that like the aphorism "a rising tide lifts all boats" that anything that generates economic growth in the US results in more humanitarian aid for the world. And then I would note all those awesome tech companies in the top 500 list that are driving creating the GDP which is coming out of the #1 source of humanitarian funding in the world and I would say "Go tech! Go tech!"

[1] http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/wp-content/uploa...

Two questions, first are HFT's creating wealth? second, are HFT's gaining wealth at the expense of the investors or the producers?

..and from my experience, three clicks is about optimum for speed and opening the board. All my sub 80s games have opened 'gashes' across the board, the three clicks gives you the best chance of jumping the 'wire' (as the other guy put it)..

If you are going to have to play the odds at some point anyway, may as well do it at the start before you invest 50s of your life in some pointless activity.