Complex question regarding this piracy debate of opinions. I once did a college seminar on cloud computing and there were questions about piracy in the crowd. One individual asked this:
"If one person, such as myself, never had the intention of buying the software I pirate, legitimately... then, lucratively, the company is not losing anything."
This is true. If one person never had the intention of buying it, knowing they can't afford it and say they have rent to pay for, then by downloading it, you haven't taken anything from the company because there was never any potential for profit. Since it's not literally stealing (Stealing is taking something away from someone/something else. You aren't taking it away. You are downloading a copy, of which there is unlimited supply. It is pirating, which is different but has similarities. You steal a heart. You don't pirate it. There's nothing romantic about duplicating and sharing a heart.)
But using the situation I have described above, how does that fair with your guys' morals and logic? If there was no probability for profit on the developer's side, then how is downloading it and using it wrong on the user's side?
This is hypothetical, I understand there is no actual way to be certain someone has no intentions of buying it/never will. And I also acknowledge that the temptation of pirating might even reduce the likelihood that they'd buy it(as I'm sure it does). This is philosophy and business in a question, so don't take it TOO seriously.
It's a false premise. People are giving things away for free, and it isn't their right to do that. It doesn't matter who downloads it, it is about who is giving it away. Those are the people who should be held accountable first and foremost.
But lets take your argument. Person X was never going to buy it in the first place.
How do you know that? How do
they even know know that?!?! The answer is, they don't, and nor do you. Their could be a promotion at some point, the price could change, the persons circumstances could change, they could come into some money and end up being able to afford anything they desired. At which point they might buy the software.
You're making an assumption to base a predefined conclusion in your head. Once again someone comes here and tries to wrap up in words, the fact that they don't see something wrong with taking someone's intellectual property, and giving it away for free without permission.
In this day and age, there is just no excuse for stealing copies of software off the internet. There just isn't.
I don't want to hear that whole "rent to pay" argument. We've all got rent to pay. Some of these guys have thousands of square foot of studio space, electricity bills, and tax to pay.
You steal software, companies lose out. Companies lose out, musicians lose out. Musicians lose out, studios lose out. Get the picture? It's ironic to me that the very same people who download all this stuff are the people who would instantly rally against mainstream music and mainstream culture. The irony is, if they keep doing what they're doing, eventually our culture will be a prepackaged mainstream pussy-whipped version of itself.
