Sorry I misunderstood. But, we still have the little problem where a copy of an app has been taken, but no recompense has been paid. The app developer isn't signing a contract guaranteeing they'll be paid for the act of *writing* the application. They are however making a contract effectively with their consumers (as in every single market place in the known universe) saying if you use the application, you will meet whatever requirements they have on you. Standard behaviour is if you don't agree with the price and conditions, then you obviously don't need the software enough and should do without.

In using a pirate application, you gained benefits in the form of access to the app. Yet, you denied the developer compensation for the time and effort they put into developing this useful application. How can this possibly be justified? The argument that "the developer didn't lose anything" is pure rubbish... the software was written for trade. You use the application, you pay the creator for the privilege. The only thing in society that doesn't work this way are charities... and apparently the day jobs of software pirates. I suspect most armchair pirates would get quite irate if people stopped wanting to pay for what they consumed ;-)

Pirates are parasites in the best case scenario, and outright thieves in the more likely case.

Oh that's easy! Just don't ever be successful :)

Please don't lump us open source fans in with this group. I like open source because it makes my job as a developer easier, but I'm also absolutely fine with paying for my software.

Open source isn't saying the price of everything is free... open source is saying that I may want reimbursement in a non-monetary form as defined in the licence (e.g., contributing bug fixes back, open-sourcing your improvements, perhaps nothing at all).

And yet, you made the effort to secure a copy of said app...?

Pretending that just because you never signed a contract, that there is no expectation of payment, is one of the most backwards arguments I've ever heard.

I've never met you, and yet I already know that I shouldn't come and break into your house... how can that possibly be, as we've never signed an agreement...?

Soo... do you even pay for anything? Why? You can use this justification to avoid paying power bills, phone bills, taxes, etc. "X has already been consumed... why should I pay for it now?"

The point is, no matter which way you cut it, piracy HURTS the further development of software. I don't actually care how each individual action is rationalised away from deep-thinking philosophical pirates... the simple fact is an application or piece of software or music track is being consumed with no return at that point in time to the creator. And... the key problem with the every presented example is that the user of the app stupidly thought they are causing no "harm" by using an application for free (or without obeying the restrictions imposed on its use by the creator). Providing "no benefit" equals "harm" in a society where you either sink or swim.

Let's break this down to the simplest point: I'm not asking pirates to stop. I'm demanding that pirates recognise themselves for being the parasites that they are. I get quite tired of people taking things they really have no right to. I guarentee you each and every one of these people would get up in arms if the same was done to them. Could you imagine that conversation? "Well... you already did 8hrs on the checkout, but I just don't really feel like I want to pay you. It's not really hurting you, because you could have just done something else instead".

While I respect that you aren't necessarily defending Apple... "assholes" sounds about right. By saying that "he should have known better", your basically saying that its ok for Apple to behave the way they did. Legally, sure... they can do that. Business-wise, we all know why they do it. From a customer stance though, it is utter crap, and Apple should be attacked for this.

By blaming the kickstarter guys, you're letting Apple get off the hook. If they had said "fine"... this never would have been a problem.

So a needless $25 non-standard connector, and a tech project that was killed because Apple have rules in place basically forbidding the bundling of multiple connectors doesn't sound to you like someone being screwed over?

For the sake of discussion, the list of patents Microsoft is using to gain these royalties can be found here: http://androidcommunity.com/barnes-noble-reveals-microsofts-android-patents-in-detail-20111114/

As a professional software developer... it boggles my mind that these things are patented.

So even though its just opinion (as is your whole argument)... it is hardly as "uninformed" as you want to believe ;)

Likewise, your position is the identical, just your default assumption is on the opposite.

Except... I don't know which innovations Microsoft is getting paid for on Android.

The practice of how patents work is not broken you are correct. What is broken is the types of patents that can be made. For example, patenting a one-click button to purchase an order off a website (remember that fiasco?), seems to badly fail the non-obvious requirement. Likewise, touch gestures have been in movies years before MS & Apple started patenting them.

This is the key problem. Microsoft has not contributed (from what I can tell) any useful advice, experience, designs or code to Android. So no, in my book, they deserve not a red cent of profit from the Android markets.

Let me paraphrase this assertion for you: "I never planned to give you any compensation for your work anyways". You know... that sounds a lot like stealing.

This is post-action justification. You don't start from the perspective of "I feel like pirating things today. I know, I'll pirate this book I never would have bought". What happens is you browse the torrent sites, or potentially read a review, and think to yourself "this sounds interesting enough to look at". From here, there are two paths you might take:

a) Attempt to find a copy by legal means. Potentially you give up and decide to pirate it, or perhaps the asking price is too expensive, but you still want to see/read it so you pirate it
b) (more likely) you go and pirate it because you were never planning on compensating the creator at all

The logic that "I wasn't ever going to buy it so you didn't lose anything" is entirely nonsensical, and I dearly wish people would stop pretending it is meaningful.

These guys have been doing this for years as well. I actually have kept overbuying my broadband allocations (I use probably 20% a month) simply because they have been so honest and decent. Good service... and they have gone to bat for my rights every time. iiNet is changing the shape of Aussie ISPs, doing a wonderful job keeping Telstra/Optus and co. honest. The others see iiNet back out, and suddenly realise you can say no to the media industry on unrealistic or overly power-hungry requests.

I don't work for them... just a very satisfied consumer of their services.

For interest sake, I had the same issue. Here is the full text from the email. It contains no references to voting, and apart from a very generic "please give us feedback" sounds more like the changes have happened... not that *I* have the opportunity to directly affect this:

We recently announced some proposed updates to our Data Use Policy, which explains how we collect and use data when people use Facebook, and our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR), which explains the terms governing use of our services.
The updates provide you with more detailed information about our practices and reflect changes to our products, including:

        New tools for managing your Facebook Messages;
        Changes to how we refer to certain products;
        Tips on managing your timeline; and
        Reminders about what's visible to other people on Facebook.

We are also proposing changes to our site governance process for future updates to our Data Use Policy and SRR. We deeply value the feedback we receive from you during our comment period but have found that the voting mechanism created a system that incentivized quantity of comments over the quality of them. So, we are proposing to end the voting component in order to promote a more meaningful environment for feedback. We also plan to roll out new engagement channels, including a feature for submitting questions about privacy to our Chief Privacy Officer of Policy.
We encourage you to review these proposed changes and give us feedback before we finalize them. Please visit the "Documents" tab of the Facebook Site Governance Page https://www.facebook.com/fbsitegovernance to learn more about these changes and to submit comments before 09 PST on 28 November 2012.
You can also follow and like the Site Governance Page for updates on this process and on any future changes to our Data Use Policy or SRR.

Heh. Anyone complaining about C# is likely complaining about something other than the language (e.g., politics, patents or CLI). The language itself is very expressive... I'm from a Java/C background, and find C# allows me to be much more expressive (almost to the same level as python and related) while still retaining absolutely awesome type-safety.

There is a difference between being honest, and being abusive though. If you want to pay extra to tell someone what you really think, I'm cool with that. If you want to pay extra so you think you can spend 20mins abusing someone up and down the isles, making some other player's life utterly miserable... I'd quite happily tell you to go jump in the ocean :)