timmah said:
Patent law would disagree with your reasoning. Stealing a copyrighted intangible that has value is legally still stealing. I would argue that the lost revenue attributed to sheer amount of theft by piracy trumps theft by taking related to media (movies, music). |
Oh, it is most certainly against the law, but laws don't stop many people from publically smoking weed, or speeding. If you can get away with a crime, while at the same time abiding by whatever moral code you live by, why not break the law? I think piracy is similar, in a way. It's easy to placate your conscience when you can tell yourself, "What are the chances that I'll get caught" or, "I'm not hurting anyone--at least, not directly, so is what I'm doing really wrong?" There's also the fact that losses associated with piracy are extremely difficult to estimate. The erroneous claims that 27,000 jobs and billions of dollars in the entertainment industry have been "lost to piracy" don't help either.