Philosophical Quandry: Piracy

[PvK]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Making an unauthorized copy of software is stealing. If you want to argue it isn't stealing the software itself because it's not physical property and you aren't denying the owner the use of said property, then it is stealing the money the software would generate in sale if you purchased it legally. There might be a different legal definition for what that is besides stealing, I am not a lawyer. But you are depriving the owner of something that is rightfully theirs. In plain speak that is considered stealing is it not?

Geoschmo

I have yet to be convinced that anyone has a right to theoretical business profit they might have made if some "intellectual property violation" hadn't occured.

A few counter-examples:
Software industry likes to claim that they lose billions of dollars they otherwise would have had, because kids and foreigners didn't pay prices they could never afford. They also increase their theoretical losses for people check out a copy of software before buying, find out what crap it is, and so don't buy it. "Hey, if they couldn't get a copy of it, they would've had to pay $300 to find out that our software is worse than shareware! We lost millions of profits we should have had!"

PvK