Quote:
Originally Posted by TGS
Are you suggesting an analogy between stealing food to keep your children alive when you have no other way of obtaining it, and breaching copyright on items of entertainment. If you are this is offensive to those tens of thousands of children who die every day because they do not enough food to stay alive - and it's a rubbish analogy.
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Many children are starving not because of lack of food in the world but because the distribution of food is inefficient. Therefore most western countries subsidize farming to eliminate occasional free market inefficiencies so that people would not have to starve when the market dictates higher price of wheat, for example.
In a way, due to subsidies poor western people when buying food are "stealing" from those who have paid more taxes. Of course, reading books is less important than having food. But the principle applies to many aspects, including tax supported education. Why one "stealing" is ok, but not the other?
Ultimately it is all about achieving distribution efficiency. Some piracy is good. The extremes: total unrestricted piracy or total control are unrealistic and probably very damaging. We need more discussion and less ultimatums from either side.