i doubt that.

Praise Jesus for the rich people! Without them how would we ever survive?

Of course, you could just as well claim the right to private property as inane and say that you have no innate right of ownership of the software in the first case. Isn't this why we're having so much trouble with the "reds" pirating goods? Most westerners assume that private property is an inalienable right similar to that of free speech, but that's just the status quo.

I have no problem facing things honestly. I steal because I cannot afford things. As one of the previous repliers posted, it would be very difficult for most of us to accrue skills in much needed software if we were to have to purchase it on our own. I wouldn't be in the position I am today if it weren't for pirated software. But let's make a real division between software stolen for personal use and that stolen for commercial use. For personal use, I may steal Photoshop to frack around or edit my personal pictures, but I make no profit off of it. The bigger worry for Adobe should be businesses making profit off of stolen software.

The problem I see with your argument is twofold. First, you assume that the current legal landscape is correct, or even if you do not you think that we should follow those laws regardless. Most pirates would argue that the laws are wrong and that they pirate as something of an act of civil disobedience. If Obama came on TV and said he passed a law that said "Thou shalt kill their neighbor" (while we're making inane arguments...) how many people do you think would kill their neighbors just because there was a law saying so? Well, copyright laws are similarly inane and even easier to break because they can be broken without your neighbor knowing about it. With personal, private property intact and no reasonable cause for search and seizure, most cases of copyright infringement almost come down to a matter of intellectual infringement. It's the data, not the medium, that they want to control.

Second, your analogy with squatting misses the mark. Squatters squat in abandoned places that no one else is using, not the private homes of individuals. A squatter in the piratic sense (I just made that word up) would be someone who picked up CDs or albums off the side of the road or maybe bought them used (another topic altogether). Pirates do not break into peoples houses to steal their CDs or burn copies of them, those are burglars. Piracy is about spreading data around... giving what you have in exchange for what others have (unless you're just leeching, which is generally frowned upon... who says there's no honour among thieves?).

And while we're on the topic... It seems to me that media is itself to blame to some extent. According to the theories put forth by memeticists (made that one up too), ideas can have a life of their own and want to be passed on. Add to that the wonderful work done by psychologists in ad companies to induce us to buy all their goods and it would seem to me that this current trend in pirating is a matter of them doing their jobs too well. As a consumerist society we're induced to always buy more more more. Have "The White Album" on LP and Cassette? Why not spring another $19.95 for it on CD? You say you have 1000 Dalmations on VHS? But I bet you've never seen it with the digital clarity that Blu-Ray can give you... People are induced to get more than they can ever actually obtain, so when the golden carrot of piracy is dangled in front of them, what do you expect?

The fact is that most people don't feel guilt for downloading MP3s from TPB. The powers that be have tried to induce such guilt with exorbitant lawsuits (Jammie anyone?) but the fact is that it's not going to work. Has the death penalty stopped murderers? Child rapists? Pot smokers? No. Punishment does not deter crime, even in the punished. The only thing that will change the current situation is a paradigm shift, a fundamental shift in the way we a) think about the consummation of goods, and/or b) the way these companies run their businesses and treat their clients. And I think that's kind of what the pirates are all hoping for... cultural change. Hmm, civil disobedience doesn't sound so absurd in that light as when I first mentioned it. I think I'll go steal something now!

My sentiments exactly.

I concede. I confess. Only windows can run Internet Exploder effectively.

As if using Windows wasn't punishment enough!

I'm with you on that one... I used one of these at MacWorld a few years back and quickly fell in love with it. Asked the guy how much it was and just as quickly fell out of love with it...

Got this when it first came out and it blew my mind. Battlezone was cool and all, but this was the first 3D game with texture... well, ok, with color fill. It's not a lot to look at these days, but it soaked up many hours of my childhood running as fast as I could without getting eaten. I can still hear the music and sound effects without even watching the movie clip. 3D certainly wasn't common early on, but Wolfenstein certainly wasn't the first. They just did it better than most. Although Wolf made gave me motion sickness... I'd take Dungeon Master over Wolf any day.

1992 called. They want their argument back.

I'm a lefty you insensitive clod! This is just another of piece of the oppressive propaganda spread by the righty elite. Lefties have rights too, you bastards! Not only am I quicker at printing than cursive, but it is also much more readable... Part of this has to do with righty teachers not knowing how to teach a lefty (although, unlike when my dad was a kid, they actually let me write with my left hand...) but also because the cursive writing system has biases against lefties. Lefties unite! Death to cursive writing!

I just checked. What he said is ABSOLUTELY CORRECT. Usenet is completely dead. Full of spam. Entirely worthless. Nothing to see here, people, so just move along... I wouldn't even bother checking it out for yourself as there's just nothing there worth looking for.

Opera's new Foaming Action Bubbles will clear away all that sticky residue from inside your intertubes that builds up after years of looking at pron.

No, we shouldn't... But the tax on DVDs is bogus as well. The DVDs are to blame for making people fat? The food I might be able to understand. You can't go without eating food, and if you're poor and don't have a good choice of food at your local mega-mart (of which over 50% is most likely packaged crap) then a tax on junk food may make healthier foods seem a better buy. But DVDs and video games... let's call them a lifestyle choice. You don't need either to surivive, so if you're doing nothing but watching tv or playing games, you've chosen to do so. Should we also put a tax on internet service too since people sit on their butts all day reading /. and the like? How about raising income taxes for office workers who sit at their desks all day or schools teacher because they make kids sit in their desks...

I guess you've missed the KFC commercials in which the mother teaches her children that KFC makes better sense because to get the raw ingredients at the supermarket costs more. That commercial made me feel quite ill... I highly doubt that anyone is substituting an entire meal for 3 or 4 bags of chips. The concern is more that because they are working long hours and are poor, it's easier to just not cook and buy KFC every night, or cook something out of a box, such as a TV dinner, or 'instant' meals. Even the healthier of those are usually high in sodium and full of filler. A sedentary lifestyle is fine... if you don't eat too much. If you're sitting on your ass all day and not exercising much, you probably don't need 2,000 calories of chicken fat, high fructose corn syrup, and all the hydrogenated oils your heart can stand. I agree with you that the carrots would be the _better_ route to take, but the box of mac and cheese with gooey velveeta plasti-cheese is oh so much easier/better.

Exactly. If I work in any finance-related industry, my company most likely pays for the Wall Street Journal or I could easily expense such a subscription. Are they likely to do the same for the New York Post? I highly doubt it... Also, if I remember correctly, the WSJ is written at college reading level, the NYT at 12th grade level, and most other papers barely make it to junior high. That means the readership of the WSJ is more likely to be making a bigger salary and thus have the money to spend on a subscription. You'd have to be silly to think that the WSJ strategy will play out in "lesser" papers.