People who endlessly quote the Bible in every situation or people who ultra-endlessly quote the ultra-endless Ayn Rand in every situation.

He can't, unless he's got prior experience with the stores in question. If he's got that and goes with the hard sell option, it's fair to hold him responsible.

Otherwise? It's because some people have gotten tired of being supposed to root for the underdog, and now blame the little guy for everything they can, and hold the big guy responsible for nothing they can avoid. It's fun, really.

Studies of the performance of baseball players have shown that their peak seasons come at 26 and 27. Quite possibly, mental and physical decline begins at the same age. (Though naturally, the former may be caused by the latter.)

Harsh penalties for file sharing strike most people as being wrong.

However, wholesale file sharing of copyrighted material also strikes most people as wrong.

A tiered system is seen as being more fair, punishing those who commit a "youthful indiscretion" more lightly, and repeat, presumably more hardcore offenders more harshly.

It makes sense from a limited perspective.

And thus decrease the surplus population.

Why not snoop every phone call, open and scan every piece of snail mail, record every conversation?

Oh, because people realize that doing that would be contrary to our laws and ethics, but get some sort of paralysis every time somebody brings up child porn and the Internet?

Yeah... thought so. It's the same exact thing, but try convincing people of that.