[flesh99]

Piracy does not equal theft. This is a common misconception thrown about by people who are on one side of the issue and upset about piracy and rightfully so. You can try and equate piracy to theft of physical property and every single analogy falls flat because programs/music/movies are not physical property. Piracy is not charged in criminal courts by law enforcement officials but rather in civil courts by the person who own the rights to the digital good in question.

I am not an advocate of warez or piracy but I am advocate of using the proper terms to describe what is happening. There is no theft taking place, there is no stealing taking place, there is a violation of the civil laws covering copyright. It is a different matter altogether. I believe the morality of the issue is clear and that copyright shouldn't be infringed but even if it is it is not theft.

The supposed losses from software/music/movie piracy are inflated from the very beginning of any discussion and there are no actual studies to back the figures cited by the likes of MS, Adobe, RIAA, MPAA, and so on. They claim every single piece of infringing material is an actual loss which is complete dross. However the developer posting here claims 10% of the downloads could be losses and while likely a much better number I suspect the true figure is much lower. For there to be an actual loss involved the person who pirated the software would have had to be willing to pay for it in the first place which is easy to see isn't true by reading here and many other places with the same kind of discussion.

To look at from a real perspective the only possible loss from someone who wouldn't have bought the software to begin with is the time invested in development and that loss is spread out amongst all legitimate and illegitimate users so that even with a small platform like WM6 the loss per piece is unquantifiable.

I don't believe the numbers tossed out by the development side of the argument and I don't buy the arguments tossed out by the other side. It is morally wrong to pirate software regardless of your reasons but the development side of the argument shoots themselves in the foot by tossing out bogus numbers and trying to use words like "theft" and "stealing" to describe piracy.

Check any basic economic theory book and you will find that with an infinite good the cost WILL approach zero. It is happening with software and music right now. The business models that allowed these to scarce goods no longer exist or are on their last legs. This law of economics does not mean piracy is alright but rather that the old model of selling software will come to an end.

The long and short of this post, which was rambling and confusing most likely, is that piracy is NOT theft in any shape form or fashion and that it is still wrong without being that. Please do yourself a favor if you are going to argue the morally right side of the issue and don't resort to blatantly false accusation and name calling to try and prove your point.