Mark Andrews writes: Re. “Razer’s Class Warfare: Murdoch’s capitalist failure drives us to download” (yesterday). I wanted to add to the current discussion on piracy — specifically lack of access. Valve Software produce some of the most popular online games (Counter Strike, Team Fortress 2) and runs the ubiquitous content distribution platform, Steam. Comments from its founder and CEO Gabe Newell, are illuminating:

In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.

Our goal is to create greater service value than pirates, and this has been successful enough for us that piracy is basically a non-issue for our company. For example, prior to entering the Russian market, we were told that Russia was a waste of time because everyone would pirate our products. Russia is now about to become our largest market in Europe.

Les Heimann writes: Three cheers for Helen Razer. Her article pinning the hypocrisy of this Murdoch cat’s paw government was right on the money — our money, that we’ve lost and Murdoch’s gained and that he and other rape and pillage types want to preserve and protect. Isn’t it grand to live in pre-Menzian times once again. It’s all fine behind the white picket fence.