Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I would really appreciate it if you didn't put words into my mouth; if I wanted to say what you (erroneously) attribute to me, then I'll say it myself.
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Your arguments aren't particularly interesting or novel, but from those arguments your motivations seem clear enough. Maybe you're too close to the problem and can't see the forest through the trees.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HansTWN
I have no stake in this, but why should it be acceptable for someone to take it for free, even if he or she never would have paid for it? That is the worst form of greed. The authors are not greedy, they are fine if those people just stay away from their works. Financially the end result for them is the same, they get nothing.
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So what if people are greedy? If someone gets something for free (wrongfully), we should only care if that harms someone and we should only use laws to prevent that first harm if the laws themselves don't cause more harm than they help. There are more and more studies coming out from reputable groups that show that the overall economic harm of copyright infringement is minimal; much lower than the harm caused to people by heavy-handed copyright enforcement.
If I go and download from PirateBay a program that someone obviously sank their blood, sweat and tears into designing, that strikes most people as a wrong on a gut-level. However, if I would never have bought that program in the first place, is the designer harmed? What money have I deprived him or her of? Do they lose some ability to sell the program to another person?
I suggest that our gut reactions to right and wrong are too simplistic in the context of copyright infringement. The concept of "theft" is the easy analogy to make but it doesn't apply cleanly to infinite goods that anyone can copy for zero marginal cost.