Or, if you feel it's ok for to steal, then I don't suppose you'd mind if we downloaded some of your bank account. After all, it's just data, right?
Wayne
I think you have to ask yourself what prompts you to think like this. Banks originated as places for people to store cash, precious metals and stones. Physically, they needed to be impenetrable, so the only way in, is by force. Now that money has in some sense become more digitised and virtualised, it still falls to the criminally-minded to make an unauthorised withdrawal without having an extremely pained conscience - because of what that data represents = somebody's living; their food and their shelter. It seems we have less choice in the matter, these days, in the physical form our money can now take and so we are all potential victims - in the true sense of the word 'victim' - of data-theft.
Now because software piracy does not involve breaking windows or pointing a shotgun into someone's face, it does feel a lot less like you're committing a 'crime' even though it can still be rightly classed as stealing. You have to make certain connections before you realise you could be screwing someone over and although you might think it should be obvious, it's often still as obvious to the average person as taping music off the radio... As in: "Where's the harm?". There is no immediately perceived victim that we can empathise with. People have to think about this, whereas in the future, it may become more instinctually a code for 'correct behaviour'.
Stealing is completely a matter of degree unless you're the kind of person who thinks being squeeky-clean makes you a better person. In which case, you might not even drop a used match in the street, have never smoked a bit of weed at parties, or sneaked a hip-flask of vodka into a nightclub.
The fact that some people do naughty things and that there are others who are willing to put their lives into upholding the law, is part of the lynchpin of society.
Here are my honest thoughts on the matter. I have used a little bit of pirated software in the past but that alone doesn't make me a thief in my eyes. I believe in buying things that you use, so in principle, I'm an honest guy.
Morals concerning the use of pirated software still occupy a grey area - and it is so due to the evolution of digital media and our attitudes to it, not because we can't differentiate properly from right and wrong. If the opposite were true, much less software piracy would occur in otherwise honest people.
I don't really care what people think. I care more what I think and for my own reasons why I would prefer to use properly licenced software. For one thing, I should have thought the penalties were obvious, when it comes to the possibility of getting a virus or the software simply not working properly. Though I think a little piracy is actually healthy for the industry... There are people, I am sure, who might never have been in the market for music software, had they not been introduced to it by a pirated version in the first place. Many people serious about progressing soon realise the benefits of paying for their software, so I'm inclined to think things must even out, somewhere along the line.
I think calling someone a thief, for using copied software without the correct licence is, at this point in time, little more than association fallacy. I look upon it all as a symptom of moving out of one age, the industrial one and into the next, the information age. I feel sure that attitudes will slowly change, with the way future generations are educated, to meet the future needs of a society who live more by the toils of their minds, rather than their hands, as the information age progresses.
Dr. V
I'm really only interested in writing songs and recording home demos. I'm sure many people have other goals, to be a competent engineer for example, and so their needs would require more cash.
