Free Riders (Score 2, Interesting)

Until people understand basic economics, people will simply conceptualize piracy as stealing from "the Man" or whatever rather than recognizing that it both drives producers out of the market and drives up prices for the paying customers who have to be responsible for recouping the development costs. Undoubtedly a lot of anti-piracy measures taken have only made things worse, but that shouldn't obfuscate the fact that piracy is a huge problem. Unfortunately, the impact of piracy on markets is largely invisible to customers, while the benefits (paying $0 vs. paying the shelf price) are anything but. The post-hoc ethical justifications are particularly disgusting... I really loved the ironic discussion of how file-sharing systems used for free-riding pirates have to deal with their own free-riding issues.