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."

Re:People don't mind paying

[Bloodlent]

Americans do pay the equivalent of a week's worth of meals for DVDs... 20 dollars, about, right? So... let's see. Ramen... 15 cents, maybe? Have three of those a day and you've got a week's worth of food and a good amount left over, which you can then buy pirate DVDs with. Everyone wins.

Re:Not surprising

[Willeh]

Ok, so it's not stealing. Should we invent a new word for this behaviour? Using the word piracy will just get the whole eyepatch and parrot on the shoulder lobby mad at us. My money's on "vzzbxt".

Re:Not surprising

[Willeh]

Damn you and your answers to everything! Now where's my Martini, and my signed copy of Billy Ocean's "Greatest hits" (and i'm using that term loosely).

Broken Promises

[pipingguy]

It's revenge for not having flying cars and a 3 day work week by now.

The Island

[zenneth]

I miss the days when the only people who were afraid of piracy were those on the water.

Re:I know loads of good FTP servers...

[RLiegh]

High quality? Looks more like a bunch [gnu.org] of dodgy knock-offs [kde.org] of legitimate [microsoft.com] software. Oh, and anyone following the links in the parent post might want to be aware that at least one of the links [kernel.org] will infect your computer with a virus [microsoft.com] which will render your computer unable to play games and potentially could prevent you from even BEING ABLE TO BOOT YOUR COMPUTER!

Remember kids, knowledgeable computer users only use legitimately licensed software! [microsoft.com]

Re:Not surprising

[autophile]

I'm sure candlemakers would have been unhappy, but most as a whole would have looked at it as if it were a boon. Not every village had its own chandler, after all.

+1: Surprising. Use of the world "chandler" in a contextually correct sentence.

--Rob