Recent articles in Outdustry and CNET announced the pirating of iTunes gift cards in China.   Apparently, hackers in China have figured out a way to generate keycode numbers for iTunes gift cards and then sell counterfeit $200 iTunes gift cards using these numbers for less than $3.  People can then buy these cards and use them to buy songs etc. on iTunes just as anyone else would do with a legitimate iTunes gift card.

The obvious victim here is Apple, who's out the money that it would normally get from selling the card to a consumer.  Not only do they lose that revenue, but they also have to turn around and pay a royalty to whomever owns the rights to the downloaded songs. 

So why should you care about this?  Maybe you don't care if Apple loses a few million dollars to piracy.  Maybe you shouldn't.  That's a discussion for another day.

What you should care about is the "other" victim here -- perhaps, the "real" victim.  This is about the honest person who buys a legitimate iTunes gift card only to find out that their card is invalid because some pirate in China stole his or her keycode number and already used it on iTunes.

For those who think piracy is a victimless crime -- think again.  The victim here, as in most cases of piracy, are the millions of honest people who play by the rules and who buy legitimate software, movies and music.  It's these honest people who are suffering the consequences of piracy. 

In the iTunes piracy case, people who bought legitimate cards may find that they spent money on an unuseable iTunes gift card.  They did the right thing, and they got screwed because of piracy.  There's also the hidden costs of piracy that results in honest consumers paying more for a product then they might otherwise pay because the copyright owner needed to build into the product cost the amounts they are losing to piracy.  Personally, I think it's time for these honest people to wake up and rebel against those who are taking the cheap -- and illegal -- way out and to join the fight against piracy.

But wait, there's one more victim here.  That's the person who bought the illegal iTunes gift card.  Maybe that person buys the card, but then tries to use it only to find that someone else  -- the person with the legitimate iTunes card -- has already used it and now they can't use their card.  Now, I'm not so sure this person is also a victim. Since this person bought a $200 gift card for $3, all except the real idiots of the world should have been aware that they were buying an illegal card.  But, at least to a very small extent, even this person is a victim -- a knowing victim, but a victim nonetheless.

So hold on.  If Apple looses here, and the person who bought the legitimate iTunes card looses here, and even the person who bought the illegal iTunes card looses here, who wins?  That would be the hackers in China who are selling the illegal cards. 

So my scorecard has Chinese hackers 1, and Apple and our two purchasers zero. 

Next time you find yourself saying that piracy is a victimless crime or that the only one who's hurt by piracy are big companies, think again.