Who hates piracy?

[Kenny]

I've turned over the concept in my mind many times over the years, and these seem to be the underlying threads of thought in most discussions:

- Copyright infringement is not the same as theft, because nobody is deprived of anything when a copy is made (i.e. the flow of information is not a zero-sum game; theft implies otherwise) - this leads to debates about lost income over potential sales
- Loss of "potential sales" is difficult to prove, as one cannot prove that any given pirated piece of software would otherwise have translated into a sale at the price point of $0 vs $50
- The industry's approach of DRM is wrongheaded, because pirates find ways to circumvent them quite trivially, leaving the paying customers to bear the brunt (i.e. they punish those who pay them for the actions of those who don't)
- The fundamental issue goes back to the fact that information, and thus software, is naturally abundant thanks to the nature of digital storage; any scarcity is artificial, and easily overcome
- General failure to resolve the problem of piracy after several decades suggests our current approach to software development is flawed in some way; however, it seems nobody has been able to pinpoint that flaw to date, or at least a way of correcting it that everyone can accept