Quote:
Originally Posted by bill_mchale
All that being said, an intellectual leap is required to understand that illegal download or duplication of copyrighted works is in fact stealing from the author. It is not so much that you are stealing their property as you are stealing the means of their livelihood. However, assuming this leap is made, there are reasons beyond the merely ethical ones for not violating copyright. Ultimately of course we need to look back to the reason for copyright in the first place; if an author's work is stolen liberally, ultimately they loose the motivation to produce works. Essentially the more we pirate, the less there is to pirate or to sell. By stealing the work of an author we like, we may in fact deny ourselves of future works that the author now lacks motivation to write.
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Bill
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I think this is one of the biggest obstacles in getting people to choose not to pirate. The book industry has priced in the fact that sometimes we borrow a book from a friend or buy it used. These instances where they fail to get revenue from a reader are fairly small in the context of the market. When, as you say, the author's work is
stolen liberally, you can't really price that in without pricing honest consumers out. I think when most people download an illegal copy they just think of it like they were borrowing from a friend. They don't see themselves as part of this mass theft. They just look at their little handful of downloads and don't think what they do makes any difference one way or the other. Even once you get people to see it, convincing them that they should choose to pay and cease being part of the problem when other people go on getting stuff for free is hard. Sadly, many people have a tendency to look at other folks and think, "Well if they're all doing it, why shouldn't I?" rather than holding themselves to a higher standard regardless of what other people do.