Of course the ends justify the means. What you call theft I call a civic obligation to the society that makes your wealth possible. An enlightened society is one which ensures a humane minimum standard of living for all its members. If we have to take from the rich to bring the poor up to that minimum standard, then that coercion is certainly the lesser of the two evils. Otherwise you'll have people dying in the streets while the aristocracy lives a life of opulence.

As for the Social Darwinism angle, I believe you have that slightly off. Her point, if you read closely, was that any charity that comes at the end of a gunpoint is not charity. That a Good Samaritan is by choice, not by mandate.

On the contrary, history has shown us that poverty correlates inversely with welfare states. When the state does not provide adequate welfare, private charity never makes up the difference with statistical significance. There's been at least two major empirical studies to determine this which are summarized concisely on Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare's_effect_on_poverty#Table_of_poverty_levels_pre_and_post_welfare

No, his term Randroid implies that Randian philosophy is oversimplified, myopic, and harmful to society. The whole purpose of the so called rational self interest is to promote your own interests before the group's which is counterproductive to running a civilization. Rand basically believed that social darwinism was okay: the strong should survive, the weak should perish, and that that's the way things should be. When most people grow up they get over that kind of immaturity and realize we're all in this together.

Can only end in tears rather. Slashdot needs an edit button.

That's why we need to extend antitrust laws to preclude OS vendors from strictly controlling what apps can and can't be distributed for a platform. Every OS with an app development SDK should be legally required to at least have an Android style "unknown sources" checkbox to allow sideloading of apps. Even game consoles. Only a law will end the abuse. Expecting people to decide with their wallets can only end the tears we're currently all shedding.

*crickets*

It does indeed look like the vast majority of the people on Slashdot who've had these sorts of close calls ignored it and it went away.

I wonder if the pattern works like this:

- 90% of the accused ignore it and it goes away.
- 9% settle out of fear, not knowing they could probably just ignore it and it'll go away.
- 1% are too prideful and deny the accusation, thereby making it easy for the **AA to force a big, showboating trial (e.g. Joel Tenenbaum or Jamie Thomas).

The moral of the story:

1. Odds against a copyright holder ever catching you in the act are insanely low to begin with, especially if you use obscure torrent sites, private trackers, or other means of concealing the file sharing.

2. If you are among the unlucky few who are accused, ignore the accusation as long as possible. Odds are the accuser will move on to easier targets.

Routinely back everything you store in the cloud locally. Problem solved.

Post-scarcity economics leads to some fun debates about pricing. I've found that many people want to pay for good software but not many people can agree on what a fair price is. Most indie houses I've visited tell me they struggle mightily on deciding what the "right" price point is. Ultimately their answer boils down to "whatever the market is willing to pay." They just sort of take the pulse of the market and set a price that seems consistent and fair with respect to similar titles.

But that seems wrong to me because it's arbitrary and subjective. If I ask five different Slashdotters whether an Android app is priced reasonably or not, I may get five different answers. Some will think it's too expensive, others will think the app is worth more. The users who think the app is too expensive will pirate it. The users who think it's worth more will only pay as much as the author charges, since they're not furnished with an easy way to give more to the author. This all leads me to believe that we go about pricing software entirely wrong.

If the right price is whatever the market is willing to pay, then why not let the market decide the price itself? Users should be able to decide how much they're going to pay you when they buy your software. If they pick a number below your recommended price (which should be the default), then show them some ads or something. That way at least you're getting the ad revenue instead of piratebay.

But it cuts both ways too. If you let users pick their own price, generous users will have an easy way to give you more money for your work. Some outliers that really like your work may even donate large amounts.

By using this pay-what-you-want model during the app purchasing experience rather than a donations button off to the side, you create an integrated experience which benefits from convenience psychology. The more convenient it is for people to pay you more, the more you will get paid because you've made it easy for your users to be generous.

And by making "free" an option in exchange for some ad impressions, you've completely abolished piracy. Why visit a shady torrent site that has shady ads when you can get it straight from the author and see their less obnoxious ads?

Whenever I meet with and indie developer, I always strongly encourage this model. The biggest reason: the market already functions this way. When you price your app, the user always has piracy as an alternative. If they don't like your price, they'll simply pirate your app. Let the user make the arbitrary decision of what price is right. Don't pretend you can make it for them. You can't.

While I applaud Rand Paul on this issue and some others, I find his boilerplate conservative stance on cutting taxes, instituting austerity measures, and curtailing the social safety net offensive. Don't be a single issue voter. His stance on many civil liberties issues may be inspiring, but his other views will make our issues with wealth inequality and poverty much, much worse.