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Living Room / Re: Pirating abandoned content?
« on: May 16, 2008, 05:40 PM »
Take two... much less philosophical - purely pragmatic...
Some people for whatever reason collect, & they will collect & collect until they can't any longer. Not as much going on now-a-days, but it happens. No rhyme, reason, or ethics aside from feeling that since it isn't used, just collected, no harm done.
Many people just cannot afford - period. Morals, ethics, none of that makes much difference - is more a luxury of those who have the good luck to spare the time debating it. They are not themselves harming anyone if they read a pirated book, or run a pirated/cracked version of Windows - they can not buy it - there is no choice. Trying to tell them that they do not deserve even such minimal benefit from technology, when they hardly stole supper off anyone's plate, is both insulting and irrelevant.
Finally, I'm always amused by an argument I find logical to a fault... If a rental service sells used DVDs at 1/2 price, & retailers discount DVDs as they become old, then their value is tied both to the physical media & the age of the content. The same could be said of books, with price reflecting both age and what they're printed on - damaged books commonly go for a fraction of retail list. Downloaded content then, particularly something not just out, should logically have a value much less than the cheapest price for damaged &/or used books and DVDs/CDs.
Some people for whatever reason collect, & they will collect & collect until they can't any longer. Not as much going on now-a-days, but it happens. No rhyme, reason, or ethics aside from feeling that since it isn't used, just collected, no harm done.
Many people just cannot afford - period. Morals, ethics, none of that makes much difference - is more a luxury of those who have the good luck to spare the time debating it. They are not themselves harming anyone if they read a pirated book, or run a pirated/cracked version of Windows - they can not buy it - there is no choice. Trying to tell them that they do not deserve even such minimal benefit from technology, when they hardly stole supper off anyone's plate, is both insulting and irrelevant.
Finally, I'm always amused by an argument I find logical to a fault... If a rental service sells used DVDs at 1/2 price, & retailers discount DVDs as they become old, then their value is tied both to the physical media & the age of the content. The same could be said of books, with price reflecting both age and what they're printed on - damaged books commonly go for a fraction of retail list. Downloaded content then, particularly something not just out, should logically have a value much less than the cheapest price for damaged &/or used books and DVDs/CDs.