Quote:
Originally Posted by Mortis
If you created anything, something that you put your heart and soul into, something that you thought was so incredible, something you sent countless hours thinking of just the right way for this thing to develop, to be complete and then you sell it to one person. Who then copies it a couple of million times, selling it, or hell just giving it away. Can you honestly, without pause, tell me that you wouldn't be pissed and want to kill the person you sold / gave it to?
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For the past 30 or so years, there have been lots of people who spent countless hours writing software simply to set it free into the world for people to use and enjoy, sometimes asking for people to donate, sometimes not. Chances are that the website the this forum runs on is driven by a web server that nobody paid a penny to use.
My point being that creativity can flourish - and really, really good stuff can come out of it - in an environment where the author doesn't get paid in money. And there are lots of people who live just to see their work get passed around a million times.
OK, so I know that's not the same situation you described. But I'd say that if you were an author today, you'd have to be blind to not realize that anything that you publish is going to available via file sharing a few minutes after you sell the first copy. So there has to be a limit to how pissed off you can be.
Now if you did all that work 5 years ago, and were hoping to fund your retirement for the next 30 years off of ongoing royalties...well then I think you'd have a strong reason for being really angry.