I pirate because I would never be afford all the things I want or use.
I'm not saying I wouldn't pay someday when I have money, but the $ to content ratio is too high. It is not stealing a product, but a service. I'm stealing an experience created by a company (video games) or a sound created by musicians and not paying the entrance fee.
There is another side to the issue that he completely ignores.
That may apply for you, but seems empirically false. Take, for instance, 2D Boy's recent "Pay Want You Want". The plurality[0] chose to give $0.01 (the lowest possible amount). I really have a hard time believing that $0.01 was anywhere near the maximum of what the average customer could afford, or valued the game at.
As long as it's without consequence and easy enough, people will take what they can. Leave a six-pack of beer in a communal college dorm and see how long it lasts, if you don't believe me.
[0]: http://2dboy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/histogram.p...
Of course, there's a massive externality to deal with: how do the people who create media get money for it? But in an optimal system (which we might not be able to create) everyone would still be able to consume as much as they want.
How is it "optimal" if it doesn't address the obvious cost?
We don't consider compensating producers as an externality where physical goods are concerned, so why is it an externality for intangible goods?
That's a good question. One important difference is that, at the point of which duplication is possible, the intangible good already exists. Compensating the creator for creating the good may or may not encourage future creations. It's a sunk cost. It's also the only cost.
Not so fast. Yes, duplicating intangible goods is relatively inexpensive, but at point of purchase and use, tangible goods also exist, the costs are sunk, etc, so they're exactly the same.
In both cases, payment compensates producers for effort and resources that have already been expended.
While true, that's irrelevant to an argument that claimed that sunk costs were an externality that wasn't all that important.
If I know X% of the population has acquired something for free, how am I supposed to feel when I'm expected to pay for it. Our society places a lot of emphasis on being the best and always being competitive with one another. How am I supposed to be the best or be competitive with others, when the playing field isn't level. The only way in this case to level the playing field is to also engage in piracy.