Quote:
Originally Posted by ardeegee
I have been pirating software, video, music, and now books for close to 20 years now-- back to when "pirating software" meant exchanging 5 1/2 floppy discs, "pirating music" involved a cassette tape, and "pirating movies" involved 2 VCRs hooked together and a rental tape. I have never met in the "real world" anyone not completely happy to accept free software, free movies, free songs, or free books when you offer it to them. (One of them was a biblical literalist Southern Baptist pastor who not only accepted cracked databases of bible translations I provided but also had an odd obsession with the movie Titanic and gleefully accepted a VCD copy while the movie was still in the theaters.) You are kidding yourself if you don't think millions upon millions upon millions of people are doing it. It is only on the internet that I meet the rare individual who turns up their nose on free stuff.
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If you do it among friends, that may not still not be 100% right, but I see no harm in doing that on a small scale. And when people exchange copied DVD's or CD's or something at least one of them has bought and paid for the item. A certain loss certainly is built into the system. They are not targets of such legislation. The internet changes this, instead of a few people you can instantly distribute among millions.
The success of itunes in making people turn to paid downloads instead of free bootleg versions proves that there are 10 times more people who do feel that paying is the right thing to do than those who don't. But it must be easy, convenient, and the pricing must be reasonable.