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Originally Posted by HarryT
I too believe that the majority of people are honest. It's the dishonest minority that we're discussing here, however.
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We've already agreed that most people are honest; the people we're talking about here are the minority we are not honest, and I see no reason to believe that someone who's dishonest isn't going to take something simply because they can (in fact we've had people say exactly that on MR, so there's proof that such people exist).
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I think you have this utterly, fundamentally wrong. In terms of the computer-owning, internet-connected population of the world I am absolutely convinced that the majority are dishonest scoundrels by your definition.
I'm sure that the number of connected teenagers in existence who have never pirated a song and/or an application can be counted on my own fingers and toes.
Having been into computers from the time of the Oric-1 I have acquired a reputation as "the computer guy" and I will occasionally build machines for friends and acquaintances and often visit people to sort out their problems. When I do, I always try to get a picture of their usage patterns and I can honestly say I have yet to visit a household which has never pirated something. Not necessarily deliberately, but still. It may be the teenage son(s) or daughter(s) who is/are the culprit, it may be mom or dad and sometimes it's even granny or grand-dad.
While my personal experiences are obviously statistically insignificant, encompassing perhaps as many as 50 households in total, I'd happily bet a few months' pay that it is applicable to and representative of society in general.
I would confidently say that at the very, very least, 75% of all connected computer users are pirates and copyright violators. Some may only ever have pirated a song or three, some like to pre-view what they buy, some may not even know what they've done is illegal (if indeed it is), while yet others may be hoovering the net for anything that might conceivably be of interest, happily hoarding it like Ice Age's Scrat. Whatever the case may be, we are apparently all fundamentally dishonest as far as you're concerned and cannot be trusted on any level whatsoever because we're not terribly concerned with violating current copyright laws.
Oh well.