Have you ever heard this argument: „I pirated this standard. But it’s no harm to the publisher, because I’d have never bought that standard anyway. So it was OK to pirate. It did not create any harm.“
Have you been using this argument to justify piracy to yourself?
What do you think? Is it really a valid argument? Or is it a false justification?
Prediction vs. Reality
Either way, it is a prediction. And how often does reality turn out differently to our plans?
While it is possible that you may not have bought a pirated standard anyway, it is also possible that you may be deluding yourself, and you would have very well bought it, without piracy.
Which one is more likely?
Predictions are influenced by many factors. Some of them are rather unconscious and can skew our predictions without us noticing the error.
How money (skin in the game) influences our ability to predict and see value
Does the price of a thing change how we interact with the thing?
Yes.
I remember seeing a video of one of the best musicians on the planet who dressed up as a street musician, playing the piano in a busy underground station. Even though some people noticed the quality of his skills and flocked around his piano, most people barely noticed him. They would have never given him a penny. Yet, had they known that he was the same guy that used to give concerts for thousands of people, selling tickets that cost several hundred or thousands of Dollars per night, they would have been eager to hear him and pay him well.
As a general rule, if we don’t pay for something we tend to engage less with it.
People who offer courses often notice this phenomenon. When they offer a free course, many people sign up, but almost nobody completes the course. However, when they charge a price, people who pay the price also commit. It is as if paying a price upfront forces them to interact with the content more. Maybe because they want to extract more value in order to justify the expense to themselves. As a consequence they also see more value in the thing they purchased.
Likewise, paying for a standard increases our commitment. We see more value, we extract more value. We engage more with it. We make more of it.
On the contrary, pirating a standard may give us a rush at the beginning, sure, but piracy also creates a tendency to devalue and discount the benefits we get for the goods.
In other words, a pirate tends to see less value in a pirated good than the good actually has.
Emotional triggers vs. prediction
Another aspect is the division between mind and heart. With our minds, we may resist to buy something, but being creatures driven by emotions, we often end up buying things anyway.
Sometimes we think one way with our minds, but feel and act another way with our heart and wallet. So even though we may think that we would have never bought a standard, we may have, in fact, bought it, because your heart may have triggered us to buy it.
Smart purchase vs. prediction
By the way, the opposite may also be true. People may not want something at first, but after some rational reflection they might realize that it would be smarter to acquire it, even if there is a cost to it, especially if the benefits outweight the cost.
Likewise, a pirate may think that he would never buy a standard, but after deeper reflection about the additional value (for example, obtaining a valid licence, more convenience, reputation etc.) he may well change his mind and make the purchase after all.
My suggestion for you
Either way, if you have already consumed the value without paying, it would be the right thing to buy the copy afterwards.
If you use the above argument as a justification to get the benefits without the cost, you are probably lying to yourself.
How to inform yourself about the content of a standard
By the way, if you think you must pirate a standard to learn about its content, this is likely no true.
Because you can assess previews on the Webstore which contain a scope, table of contents, and references – completely for FREE! And previews will likely teach you enough about the content to allow you to make a buying decision.