Software Piracy Seen as Normal

Spad writes "The BBC is reporting that people don't see downloading copyrighted material as theft, despite concerted efforts by the games, music and movie industries to convince them otherwise. The report, titled Fake Nation, claims that '[People] just don't see it as theft. They just see it as inevitable, particularly as new technologies become available...The purchase of counterfeit goods or illegal downloading are seen as normal leisure practices,' However, they also found that while people are generally not buying counterfeit software from dodgy dealers on street corners, they are still happy to purchase them from people they know at the office/pub/school in addition to downloading them. Nobody can really be that suprised by the 'popularity' of downloading pirated software, but I was a little thrown by the apparent willingness of people to pay for pirated copies of it."

Comments

Maybe because it isn't theft?

[RoLi]

It's copyright infringement and that's neither theft (the act of taking some property away from someone) nor piracy (the act of robbing ships at sea).

This is bad for open source/free software.

[Colin Smith]

OK, so copyright infringement isn't theft, or piracy and the hyperbole is farcical. It's still wrong, you have no right to make use of the copyrighted material.

There's plenty of free stuff out there that you *do* have a right to use.