Why is it hard to convince people that piracy is theft?
Recently through the nature my business I have came into close contact with piracy and content pirates and I can not fathom the mentality of pirates and leechers! As a computer scientist, I have tried to always pay for the license and when I couldn?t use the open source alternative version. This was partly due to respect to my fellow IT men who work hard on the products and a doze of healthy fear of conviction; I extended this attitude to multimedia products as well.
So when I first encountered piracy I told myself that it is some impulse reaction of some consumers who think, because they have paid a lot of money for something they have to share it with others so everyone else can use it. But lately I have encountered more than a bunch of people that do this thing with a burning passion. There are people who produce over dozens of pirated material everyday and put the time to distribute them all over the web. Why would you want to do it, is completely over my head, Now what is worse is seeing some people charging money for access to their pirated material. You might ask why is all this strange to you. Le me give you an example.
Out of any bunch of normal people it is very hard to find people who would just randomly walk into a TV store and pick a TV set up and use it, and defiantly there would be less people who would sell it after taking it. Now say you catch one of these people who did it. The person will confess that he is thief and everyone else will agree with is. You can not find people who would defend stealing they might justify it but will not defend the act it self. Now let?s look at media piracy. out every handful of people almost everyone would gladly use any form of pirated material and some few will try to make money but the thing that is most painful is if you accuse them of theft not only they believe they have not stolen anything but also will fight tooth and nail to prove they are innocent and what they did was innocent! You can never hear that in a court hearing about bank robbery people are using the bill of rights or privacy acts and laws about freedom of speech to justify their actions or get away free from theft charges, but when it comes to piracy they will do it gladly and make the producer look like fat cats who are greedy! And at the end you the hard working producer comes out looking like an ass! Like when Metallica tried suing the pirates! They lost a lot of their fans! Why people think piracy is any different from theft? What moral element is missing in this equation?
Any opinions?
So when I first encountered piracy I told myself that it is some impulse reaction of some consumers who think, because they have paid a lot of money for something they have to share it with others so everyone else can use it. But lately I have encountered more than a bunch of people that do this thing with a burning passion. There are people who produce over dozens of pirated material everyday and put the time to distribute them all over the web. Why would you want to do it, is completely over my head, Now what is worse is seeing some people charging money for access to their pirated material. You might ask why is all this strange to you. Le me give you an example.
Out of any bunch of normal people it is very hard to find people who would just randomly walk into a TV store and pick a TV set up and use it, and defiantly there would be less people who would sell it after taking it. Now say you catch one of these people who did it. The person will confess that he is thief and everyone else will agree with is. You can not find people who would defend stealing they might justify it but will not defend the act it self. Now let?s look at media piracy. out every handful of people almost everyone would gladly use any form of pirated material and some few will try to make money but the thing that is most painful is if you accuse them of theft not only they believe they have not stolen anything but also will fight tooth and nail to prove they are innocent and what they did was innocent! You can never hear that in a court hearing about bank robbery people are using the bill of rights or privacy acts and laws about freedom of speech to justify their actions or get away free from theft charges, but when it comes to piracy they will do it gladly and make the producer look like fat cats who are greedy! And at the end you the hard working producer comes out looking like an ass! Like when Metallica tried suing the pirates! They lost a lot of their fans! Why people think piracy is any different from theft? What moral element is missing in this equation?
Any opinions?
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