Just read the long article on piracy. Great article IMO, but then the guys mostly shares my opinion with more numbers.
To nitpic one element among other :
- Relation between availabiliy of demo and piracy : none.
- Suggestion : Do more demos.

Many folks like me are very well paid. We don't sit our rumps in a chair without pay. We don't make as much as rockstars of any copyright industry, but few are Aerosmith or JK Rowling, but we are comfortable and I don't need to be a rockstar. Most content creators are in my category.
And if you need an example of an industry that has no copyright protection yet thrives regardless (and it's easy to "steal" ideas in it): the fashion industry enjoys no copyright protection. In fact, some folks in that industry feel the lack of protection has made their industry better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL2FOrx41N0

Thank you for sharing the link. It was very interesting and I like the way it is presented. I was surprised to hear that it is actually so easy to copy a design. So I could open a fashion factory and sell Hugo Boss-like suits without the logo for a smaller price... that was very surprising for me to hear that plagiarism is not illegal in many industries.
However I must admit that I want to believe it would work, but still can't. I have doubt that computer games and fashion industry really work the same way. With a fashion its more difficult to copy it for yourself, only a few people are sewing their own clothes anymore, so at least you buy the clothes from somebody. If clothes were easy to copy, probably they would come with online activation too? On the other hand, its so easy to design a similar clothing, just change the color or cut 1 inch somewhere. With games where you haven't the source code and the artists ready, try to make a similar game like World of Warcraft ... it will take millions and years and many persons. And finally I am not sure that all designers like the situation very much. Maybe they fear strong chinese competition where their newest designs are copied just in time after they are out with maybe the same or better quality and always 20% undercut. At least I could imagine this when trying to think about the worst.
But nevertheless I had many new ideas as input. Great! :)))

If there was a god of 'And Another Thing...' adricv would be his name.

That article was quite a work to go through, but it was worth it. Some of your opinions get shattered on the jagged rocks of reality, or at least with a good and articulated article backed up by cold facts.
Doesn't do anything to change my buying habits, since I buy all my games anyway. Dinosaurs go extinct more times than I pirate something, don't feel the need to bother otherwise.

I actually saw the video and it is very interesting, even though of course it defends a position completely different from mine.
Yet I believe what she claims cannot apply to video games (or book, or music) for several reasons :
- There is a delay in reproducing a dress or clothes, when you have copied something, too bad, it is so last-year already. There is no delay in copying a game or the text of a book and even if it was, those have no "trends". I agree that cars are sold for years after their first development, which brings me to point two :
- Quality - the girlf in the video clearly states that high-end designers clothes have a better quality than the copy. I think it is even more important for a car. Copy for music or video games are perfect.
- Finally, and I think it is the most important, clothes, cars and to a lower extent good quality food are Veblen goods - having a $199.9 copy of shoes at a gala where everyone has the original is a major social faux-pas. Don't do it. Video games and music are not really - as of now at least. I agree that if you are extremely wealthy and have pirated music CD / video game DVD with the title written with a marker pen on it, you look extremely cheap when friends come at your place, but for most of the target audience, esp. video games, no one will care.

That's exactly what should change. Public contempt works well against most things...

I assert that one of the biggest projects I work on is available for anyone to copy for free and write additional plugins for (and even charge someone else to do it for them) I still have enormous amounts of work. That is software.
I assert that Lawrence Lessig and Cory Doctorow both give away their books for free and yet still make a living as authors. Some authors tell fans where their books can be pirated in digital form. That is books.
I assert that there are musicians, even ones that weren't famous on labels in for years beforehand, that give away their music for free or "choose your own price, even 0" and still make a living as musicians. That is music.
Also, much knockoff and counterfeit clothing gets made during an unofficial night shift after the official shifts for the actual clothing are done for the day. It is neither a year behind nor always lower quality (though it often is as they must purchase extra raw materials). Certainly some clothing designers, car makers, etc. would like copyright and patent protection but they really are shortsighted and don't know how lucky they are to not have it.
Anyone who watched that TED talk should pay attention to that chart she showed about the gross revenues of IP protected industries vs. ones with little or none.
And remember, 3D printing is up and coming and a real technology. You will be able to print your own physical goods soon. Will I be stealing if I print a plastic body that looks like a Porsche to go onto a beat-up old car frame and engine? Remember, the only part I can't legally copy is the trademarked logo.
I suggest all of this will eventually make the common person's life better and we will not all suddenly find ourselves unemployed.

If people were willing to share all their professional creations for free and rely on the willful generosity of strangers to get by, we might as well take the logical step and finally eliminate money. People would treat their work as a pleasant thing that helps the society and makes them useful and valuable, they would only compete for recognition and respect, wars would promptly disappear.
It is a beautiful dream, Comrade Orcishgamer. I'm pretty sure a lot of us would love it to become reality. It might simply take a long, long time to become feasible.

Well, I don't discount your hypothesis of my belief in one possible outcome (an outcome that would be most probably desirable, were it truly utopian and not dystopian), but I think there's many, many, many steps between where we are today and any such eventual outcome:)
As you mentioned wars, I think most wars stem from fear of not having enough of something (or the perception thereof), food, energy, you name it. So yeah, it would probably be the end of wars as well.

That's why I said it will probably take a long time. Frankly - I doubt we'll live to see it happen.
I wouldn't go as far as to say "lack", because that subtly implies an objective quantity that a populations fails to obtain. I would even avoid the word "need" and rather say that the reason for wars are simply "wants" or even "greed".
Of course - that's oversimplification, because there are also conflicts that stem directly from lack of understanding and, as a result, intolerance (be it religious, ethnic or any other). I said "directly", because wars caused by greed wouldn't happen if people were seeing their "enemies" as fellow humans.
As such - we can casually add the "brotherhood of men" as another foundation for our utopia.

The death of tribalism is going to be necessary.
I do think war stems from fear of not having enough more times than we think. The US wages continual war over oil, despite what people say, easily accessible oil is running out faster than the average person thinks. We need thousands of mile deep ocean rigs to keep up these days.
I think the premise of Watchmen wasn't just a comic book plot point, but actually really insightful, the characters really did want to avert war, at least some of the characters felt the only way to do so was to provide essentially limitless energy worldwide. Honestly with limitless energy a lot of the reasons for war disappear. With the death of tribalism the rest of them do, as well.
EDIT: If it wasn't clear, I equate the death of tribalism with the brotherhood of man that you describe.

You know - because of what I've learned on political philosophy, I've figured that if we're discussing classical communism and you mention "death of tribalism", it's simply about a world without countries. Which is not necessarily THE SAME as universal peace and mutual understanding of all people, but may simply follow as a result. In the world we described - borders would be totally useless, with no threats of war and no import/export taxes to impose.
I thing this is where I'll leave it for now, since it's almost 3 AM and I'm curious to see how fellow GOGers will respond to such horribly politically incorrect statements.

Forget demos, most of those are too short these days (you spend longer downloading than you will playing); give me the days of shareware again.
Microsoft has potentially learned this with Fable II. They re-released the game digitally with its chapters split up into episodic instalments, with the first episode being free (just like shareware). According to Peter Molyneux, "1.6 million downloads and that was incredibly successful. It's gotten Fable up to one of the top selling games on the 360".
That's an untapped profit opportunity no five-minute demo will ever provide.

Obviously, I do not know what you do, so I have nothing to answer to this.
Not being in this industry myself, I would not know. It is of course very possible. First, you still got the Veblen effect, and also when you buy a copy you do not know whether you buy a copy of "good quality" or "of bad quality". So you pay for the assurance.
To give you an example, take private labels (in food or "current products". Most of the time they are producted in the exact same plant, by the same company, and in the exact same way as a much superior brand. Yet, people with money prefer to buy the brand rather than the cheaper alternative. Why ? Because of the signaling / Veblen effect ("I have the money to buy Kellogs and not a cheap copy" and security, because even though most of the time it is the same product, there are a few instances where it is not and you "pay" to avoid the risk of buying lower quality food.
Without being an expert on clothes, I believe the same mechanism is at work. Mechanism which would not work on "art" products.
This is in my opinion a very bad argument. Food industry weights $1bn in the US, but it includes ALL the industry chain, i.e. including raw materials like cereals and vegetables. What I would call, by lack of better word in my limited English, the recipy part of the food industry, probably accounts for much less than that. Much, much, much less.
Using the same argument, I could say that games and magic tricks represent a very small market, and have no IP protection. Conclusion : if I added IP protection to these their markets would be larger. Flawed reasoning ? Of course - you did the same.
You will not do it because everyone will recognize the Porsche as a copy, and most of the price you pay when paying the Porsche is not the quality per se but the fact that you are saying the rest of the world "look - I can buy a Porsche".
I put that part at the end because it is the crux of the problem. I would claim the book example is largely irrelevant and the music example not so relevant.
For the book example :
- A "real book" is more handy than any "digital book", making piracy (even authorized piracy) marginal
- This allows them to become famous, and then to get money by doing conferences - all the more since there is ONE identified writer, instead of "a team".
- I tend to believe, I cannot prove it, that people reading books a lot tends to "pirate" less and consume more. I can be wrong.
For the music example :
Yes, some artist do that ; one very famous being Lady Gaga who makes all her musics and video available on www.youtube.com, so it is easier to "discover" her (I discovered her that way) and she makes money on concerts (100+ a year I think) and royalties on diffusion by radios and music channels - a sure income source).
I tend to believe free copy for most music would work (I never claimed it would not if you read what I wrote so far). I still don't believe it is desirable because I believe artists should be able to decide how their "intellectual product" is spread (morale and not economical reason) and because some form of music would suffer from this (basically, all artists who would / could not perform great on concerts - I believe royalties would tend to decrease for all artists on the long run due to TV and radio being less and less popular forms of media). What I like with the current equilibrium is that an artist who wants to allow free copy of his product to become famous and catch on live performances and royalties can, while an artist who wants to sell his music directly to customers can as well. Banning IPs would NOT improve the condition of the first type of artist, but would make the situation of the second type of artist more difficult.
Of course, you could claim that additional difficulties would encourage the artists to do more and better. It is possible, but neither you nor I have proof of this.
Yet, this does NOT apply in my opinion to video games (or movies).
In movies and video games, your only source of income is what the consumer pays (at the theater or at the shop) - they have for only source of revenue the one musicians tends more and more to bypass since they control it poorly. Team making video games cannot do conferences, cannot receive royalties.
Of course, some tried to find additional sources of revenue, with free games and micro-payment for content in game (most browser games and the famed Farmville works that way). Does it work ? Well, it works for smaller games (team of 2 or 3 persons), and has never been attemped by larger games. But it is not a future I like, and also I believe micro-payments are worse for you "freedom" then the current system since micropaid-for contents would still be protected. As for games in which you pay for in-game money (FarmVille, Utopia Kingdoms, ...), well...
So now to your last points : some great games are or were at some time completely free or "pay-what-you-want". Examples include Dwarf Fortress (the guy makes a living out of it), World of goo during a short time ("pay what you want").. Well, yes, they work AND they are great games. But first you would have to assert how much of the money the author receives is actually given because people support "free gaming" and likes the idea of a "pay what you want" system. Those people would not donate money - or as much money - if ALL games were sold like this. The only data we have is probably very inaccurate (the game was already sold like a regular game for months before), it is 2D buy survey of people who bought their game during the "pay-what-you-want" period. 22% of the people surveyed claimed that they pay that amount to "support" this way of paying. That's a lot (considering 11%percent were "cheap bastards", that''s a full 25% of the "paying customers"). How much did this sale brought to 2D Boys ? Well, probably quite a lot (between 40 000$ and 80 000$ if you take their estimation, probably closer to 40 000$ since they bound their intervals like this "2$ - 2.99$" and people are more likely to pay a full number, i.e. 2$ or 3$, rather than 2.99$). Of course more people would have used this way of paying had the game not been sold the "regular" way already. Would have they paid as much as they paid in retail / DD ? I don't think so (people in the few "pay what you think it is work" restaurants around the world pay on average less than the "normal value" of what they eat, even excluding free-riders). Would a no-indie game sold this way recover the production cost of say $3m (lower bound) ? Possible but not likely - I don't think people would pay much or significantly much, all the more since World of Goo customers are IMHO older, more willing to pay and more informed than your average gamers. I believe this would work for niche games, like Paradox Interactive Games or maybe Telltalegames. I would also work for indy or small team games. Would it work for Bethesda with budgets in the $10m minimum ? I don't think so. Yet again, I prefer to have the two systems in place, rather than only the "free exchange" system imposed to everyone.

Good old nationalism is not to be discounted IMO. WWI, Korean War or the Viet-Nam CAN be explained by economy or scarcity of ressources, but the ideology / nationalism explaination is stronger.