What is considered damage by one individual may be considered in a different light by another. It's entirely possible for someone to believe that they are "doing the right thing", while from another viewpoint, be committing a crime.

_________________
be immersed

This is very true.
But, as in many such cases, its not really a democracy, and the opinion of of the actual author/owner of the work carries the most weight, imho.

What you are saying is that, as long as you personally do not have a moral problem with something, its ok for you to do it, regardless of what anybody things - everybody can have an opinion, and what's considered good for you, and all that... Well, beside such attitude being a very slippery slope, I say that the rights of the author/owner of the work always take precedence. If the author/owner agrees to give it for free, or to allow piracy, its their choice to make. If they don't, then I can't see an argument which would convince me that its still ok to pirate//steal it, and its a matter of personal opinion.

Having said the above, I am aware that different countries have different rules/laws, so it is not a very simple issue.
But morally speaking - I will always support the rights of the author/owner.

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

From talking to friends whose works are affected by this either they fall into the a) ignorant that they're taking food off the table of someone (generally the pfd uploaders, teenagers etc), b) "THE DATA MUST BE FREE!11!!" ones (generally delusional psuedo-Marxists IT heads) or c) couldn't give a crap, cracking stuff and releasing it is a pastime (generally the ones involved in more complex codec breaking or whatever).


This of course ignores the criminal ones who do it for a profit.

Isn't talking the victims of this activity a bit of an odd way to establish the motives of the people who perform the acts? You have portrayed them in a very negative way, which is not surprising given the people you have spoken to.

It's the justifications that they've seen given when people get caught/told off within the community. I'm portraying them in a negative way because, well, yeah what they're doing is negative. Piracy is very common, that doesn't make it morally just or any nonsense like that.

Even hundreds of years after the author's death?

Without diving into the right or wrong implications of pirating: The common misconception I'm so fed up with is assuming every pirated copy would be a copy sold.
Videogame-related but gog.com sells games without any protection and they already run and expand for years. Humblebundle.com does not even "sell" games because you can give as much as you like and they take in millions of dollars every week. Kickstarter.com gets people to spend millions of dollars for projects they like and deem worth the money.

In the end, as I see it, there is money and there are people who like to spend it.

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go