The response of the Bungie fan community, and indeed much of the online gaming community, has been one of sympathy and support for those at Bungie affected by the French-language copies of Halo 2 that are now circling the world ahead of their official release date, in defiance of international copyright laws, and allowing users to consume expensively-produced entertainment content without paying anything to get it.

However, some, of course, have expressed slightly different sentiments, which is desireable and understandable. Such an outpouring of support for Bungie would mean nothing were it not sincere and well-considered, something impossible to generate if the possibility of differing opinions did not exist.

Unfortunately, many of these expressions of doubt, anger, jubilation and skepticism-- as well as some of the expressions of support-- are not based on careful consideration, knowledge of the market or the law, or any basic insights into human behavior; and many are just appeals to humanity's baser instincts, or to rank paranoia.

So I thought I'd take a moment to address some of them.

The leak helps Microsoft. There have been a number of reasons used to justify this conclusion; some call the leak a kind of unofficial demonstration.

However, the bottom line is that Halo 2 is already one of the most-hyped console games ever, and certainly the most hyped on the Xbox. It had advertisements in movie theaters, for goodness' sake. And if it weren't for Doom 3, it'd probably be the most hyped game coming out in 2004. Some may argue that it still is.

In short, the pirated copies of Halo 2 don't, and cannot, benefit Microsoft. The download is so large, and the hurdles-- namely, modchipping an Xbox-- so high, that nobody who can successfully use it is someone who didn't already know about Halo 2, enough to decide whether or not to purchase it. If they're purchasing it anyway, then they are breaking the law out of sheer impatience; if they were not, then they are doing so with an intent to steal.

And if we rule out the ludicrous idea that someone who doesn't already own an Xbox would purchase one to play a game they got for free, we have to admit that every illegal copy of Halo 2 out there is, at least, a potential loss of a sale for Microsoft.

Piracy is good because it builds mindshare/marketshare. This is actually a more reasonable concept; the only problem is, it's being applied to the wrong market. There are markets in which Microsoft, like other companies, either ignores, tolerates, or takes a slightly more conciliatory than usual attitude towards the piracy of their products; mainly emerging markets with developing economies, where the usual retail prices of such essential tools as Microsoft Office are simply out of reach of most businesses and individuals, and illegal copies are freely available. Such is the case in much of the Former Soviet Union, for instance, and much of the Far East. In those markets, it affects not just operating systems and applications, but games and movies as well.