This subject comes up every month or so, and every time I give my opinion which is always in the minority. Sometimes I think I'm the only one. So once again, as I prepare to get downmodded into oblivion, here goes...

You forgot Side 3 - I hate software piracy because it's wrong. Period. It's unethical, immoral, and illegal. And it's that simple. I don't even consider either of your 2 choices because both sidestep the question of right or wrong to examine other issues. This is situational ethics.

In all the years I've been in business, my number one concern has been ethical issues. The partner who disconnected his speedometer to increase his resale value. The vendor who raised his prices to get a personal "kickback". The employee who downloaded a customer list and sold it to a competitor. I could go on and on and on...

I've seen stuff like this so many times, and I ask the same question every time, "If they will compromise their ethics on something small, where do they draw the line?" I've seen multi-million dollar deals scuttled because someone didn't trust someone else because of their personal behavior on a "small" issue like this. Don't let yourself fall into this trap. It simply isn't worth it to save a few bucks.

I've heard all the counteraruments. "It's no big deal." "Everyone does it." "It's not hurting anybody." "I'll never get caught." Or the worst one of all, "They've already ripped me off, so I'm just getting them back." And you know and I know and everyone here knows it's all BS. We're just making excuses for what we all know is wrong.

Almost every proprietary software vendor has a complimentary "developer version" or a very cheap "student version". There are many other ways to get access to software or music without breaking the law or compromising your ethics. But a lot of us are just too lazy to take advantage of these things.

I would expect the Hacker News community, of all places, to be especially sensitive to this issue. After all, we are smart, hard working people who make software. But it seems like I'm always in the minority on this one.

So before you click that down arrow on this old prude, can I ask one question? Does anyone agree with me?

> Does anyone agree with me?

The law doesn't even agree with you. Copyright is not a natural right, it's an exchange of monopoly for the hope that your artistic achievement will advance the natural arts of our society. If the terms of that grant are onerous and society derives no benefit from it, then it is not immoral or unethical for society to revoke your monopoly.

In this case, if everyone is pirating, then it's absolutely moral for an individual to do it.

"The law doesn't even agree with you."

My lawyer would beg to differ with you.

"Copyright is not a natural right"

Neither is land ownership.

"In this case, if everyone is pirating, then it's absolutely moral for an individual to do it."

Thanks for the new counterargument. This one is even better than "They've already ripped me off, so I'm just getting them back." I guess I'll be using it in next month's post.

Land is a rivalrous good, whereas most digital products are not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics)

Some information goods are excludable, but not easily, and less so with fast internet connections. This pushes them towards the category of 'public goods':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good

Copyright is "legislated exclusion":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Possible_solutions

Anyway, copyright is a compromise, and I agree that people should respect the law, but the law should also change to fit the facts. The Mickey Mouse copyright extenions, for example, are what might be described in technical terms as "a load of horse shit". 100 years is way too long. I think that we should look at how to rejig the compromise, without eliminating it completely, for the moment.

If society declines to acknowledge the limited monopoly granted, why is it immoral for an individual within that society to also ignore the monopoly?

"My lawyer would beg to differ with you."

The constitution doesn't agree with your lawyer.

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

That established copyright. It doesn't say anything -- direct or implied -- about "property". And if you read the letters of Jefferson, you can see that the idea that an intangible item cannot be treated as property was very much on the founding fathers' minds.

Please stop equating being legal with being moral.

There is no inherent morality to the copyright monopoly as it is not a natural right. It was created foremost as a mutually beneficial arrangement between the Crown and publishers to ensure certain subjects were not published in exchange for a guaranteed monopoly on publication. In our current system, copyright is supposed to be a mutually beneficial arrangement between Society and creators to foster the useful Art in exchange for a temporary monopoly. Since the temporary nature of that monopoly has been over-stretched, effectively to the point of permanence, society (especially the digitally literate youth) has begun to disregard the compromise.

We sell boxed software (a 'virtual' box) in my main business. To combat piracy, among lots of other reasons, we also offer an open source edition. We sell primarily to businesses, but I know some businesses have pirated our commercial version in the past.

One local company we found out about recently was pirating our stuff for years and reselling it to his clients, but we only found out when they went out of business and all these companies with technically illegal copies of our software needed help. I could have asked them to fork over some cash, but I think that would have been more wrong. Forcing an extra fee when someone is in a bind is definitely wrong. So we helped those we could.

In the end I don't worry about whether piracy is wrong (I think our copyright laws need serious reform anyway), and while I do pay for lots of software, I don't bother worrying about it for myself. It's a loss of potential money, but not of real money you ever saw. So it's not the same as actually stealing money from me. I also never bothered to put license key verification into the software either, not worth the effort. If I did that, it says I don't trust anyone, and it would only be wasting effort which is actually costing me something. It comes down to focusing on preventing piracy or focusing on moving your business forward. Easy decision there.

"If I did that, it says I don't trust anyone"

So you don't have locks on your home either?

Software and physical goods are not the same thing, the loss of a "copy" of software doesn't make the original disappear too like stealing a physical item does. Also, personal and company goods are different as well, since one uses them for profit and the other does not.

In my company I assume most users will use the open source version, I assume a few will trickle into the commercial side. Of those, some might pirate, but I don't focus on those. I focus on making money and building a better product and providing value for paying customers. We've been around for over 7 years now, so it seems to be working too.

But yes, I do lock my door. Mainly because I work from home, so it's also my office. But many people up here in Canada actually don't bother locking their doors, and society doesn't seem to be too badly off because of it :)

The good thing about moving apps onto the web, is that it gives centralized control, and gets rid of the concept of software piracy. Sure you could hack the website, or steal an account possibly, but that's easy enough to fix once found.

I think 'software piracy' is such a broad term there's no easy way to have a blanket opinion on it. Copying DVDs and cover art and selling hard copies is clearly wrong. But say preventing a machine from emitting UDP packets so you can run 2 copies of the same software on a home network... Well, the only person who even knows about that piracy is yourself, and if you didn't do it, you probably wouldn't buy 2 copies anyway. In that instance there is no damage, no lost sale, and so I'd say it was ok.

An interesting point. But copyright according to the US constitution is something Congress _can_ grant for a limited time "to promote arts...". So this _is_ a case of situational ethics.

At least in the U.S.

Law != Ethics

Well, your self righteousness might be a tad misplaced. Let me explain. I know people, small charities and welfare organizations, who need to use computers for work but barely have the money. When they get donations, they spend it on something like feeding the poor rather than buying a copy of Windows. Its easy to take the moral high-ground...and classify the world in four scenarios - many more exist.

"self righteousness might be a tad misplaced"

So now insisting on honesty and ethics in business is "self righteousness"? I really don't know how to respond to that.

Your example of the charity is the pure definition of situational ethics. I guess you can rationalize any kind of wrong behavior if you tried hard enough. Just out of curiousity, I wonder how clergy people would react to receiving stolen goods to benefit their charity.

"Its easy to take the moral high-ground"

No, it's easy to flow with the crowd. Sometimes it's really hard to stick with your convictions. Have you read this thread?

First off, I regret using the tone I have used in my previous post because it seems to have made you angry.

My point is that your discussions on a bulletin board doesn't change ground realities. Some piracy exists because there seems to be a valid need, needless to say that some piracy exists to fulfill greed. The high dependence on computing in todays world has forced people to use software - most of which, especially for the not so technically inclined, is expensive. Outside of the US, a copy of windows is more expensive than one months earnings. The whole problem is not as binary as you suggest.

Stuff you pointed out that has nothing to do with this discussion -

* 'Situational Ethics' is the kind of term that applies only in a intellectual masturbation of this sort.

* Clergy are not the only people doing charity.

* Your convictions are not my convictions.

PS: I wonder if you have any MP3s of songs that you never purchased. Honestly...

> So now insisting on honesty and ethics in business is "self righteousness"?

Well, are you talking about business, or private home use?

The examples you gave were more deplorable than someone downloading a song (for personal use) is.

How about Ubuntu instead of pirating Windows?

How about that the people who need it dont even know what ubuntu is.

PS: I use ubuntu :)

So teach them. Small charities such as that are perfect candidates for Open Source solutions.

Thats not my line of work. Just an observation.

Yes. Perhaps we could give money to a someone (e.g. a charitiy) who does this for us. It's a lofty goal.

What about the Sonny Bono act? What if one finds the rules the governing bodies have made with regard to copyright and patent protection are immoral, unconstitutional, and an overall burden on society? Would you find a case for someone who says, "I'll respect the copyright laws but only as they were before the Sonny Bono act?"

Piracy is theft, but what really hurts is the reactions companies have against piracy -- they make legitimate ownership more cumbersome!

Gack! Piracy IS NOT THEFT. It is copyright infringement. The copyright lobby would like you to believe that it is theft, but it is not. If you pirate a $10K software suite, you will not be charged with grand theft: software.

Theft, by definition, transfers value from the original possessor use to the thief - a zero sum transaction where the thief gains at the owner's loss. Copyright infringement does not do so. It only deprives the original possessor of potential future value. (You could even argue within some legal jurisdictions that there is copyright infringement only when the pirate derives commercial gain from the copy.)

Yep, the only reason they call it theft (or even piracy) is because it sounds a lot more dramatic.

When I first heard about piracy, it meant people copying CDs and _selling_ them.

Heh. Interesting that they've stopped using the term "piracy" so much now that pirates are thought of as debonair swashbucklers who are sticking it to The Man, instead of as the murderous thugs that they actually were (are). Thank you, Johnny Depp.

Yes, it's wrong.

But in a way it's also right.

Take a random episode of "24" for example. There's a big ole crisis going on, and some nasty terrorist is withholding important information which could save millions of Ameerrrriican lives :p

Most of us watching are lead to feel like it's "morally correct" to torture the terrorist to extract the information that will save lots of innocent peoples' lives.

It could be the same kind of "morally correct" that downloading a song is, when the party _potentially_ losing money is a multi-gazillion-dollar corporation that's suing children and grandmas left and right for a little pocket change.

Actually I happen to like buying good music on CDs, so that I can enjoy it at maximum sound quality and all. DRM and lossy compression make iTunes totally irrelevant to me.

And the other classic pro-piracy defense, that it works as a "try before you buy" has come true many times in my case. If I download a song that I really really like, I'll want to buy it too. If I don't like something, I won't listen to it either.

So let's not forget that when someone downloads a song, the record companies are not only potentially losing money, but also potentially gaining some.

On the other hand, the re-use value of even a good movie is pitifully low compared to good music.

A movie is simply not worth buying at 22 euros (Finland).

In Finland, all empty recording media such as CD- and DVD-Rs are sold with a sort of "piracy tax" included in the price.

Basically we're paying some kind of "royalties" to at least the Finnish equivalent of the RIAA, but I doubt that money ever goes anywhere else.

This tax was ushered in accompanied by a lot of moaning about how piracy is hurting the artists. "Every time you download a song, a baby seal is forced to listen to Smells Like Teen Spirit for five hours", and so on..

What it all means is that every single person in Finland who buys a CD-R is considered a criminal in advance, and pays a little tax for it.

So if we're already paying for being dirty criminals, why shouldn't we download things too?

Well, I've ended up rambling quite a bit about random thoughts, but the idea is to offer a different point of view.

The point is that piracy can be both right and wrong. There is middle ground.

People want entertainment, and many of us are willing to pay for it.

As a sidenote, could someone (PG?) please do something about the "Unknown or expired link" error we're getting?

Maybe increase the session's lifespan a bit or something?

So, you believe everyone single movie download hurts someone? Note that this is a factual, not ethical, issue.

I never said anything about who is hurt. In fact, you've just presented one of the counterarguments I discounted.

You gave "It's not hurting anybody." as a false counter-argument.

I'm clarifying that you believe, as a matter of fact, that every single movie download hurts someone.

After that clarification, I will ask for a clarification about who is hurt and point out particular cases of downloading where, as a factual matter, I don't see that they (the people you say are being hurt) could make an argument that they were hurt. Certainly not one that could hold up in court (which is the appropriate standard for determining if the person really was hurt, correct?)

"I'm clarifying that you believe"

You're not clarifying. You're assuming. And your assumption is incorrect.

It would be silly for me to argue that anyone is getting hurt by downloading a movie. It's a difficult argument to make.

I'm arguing that it's wrong. That's all.

>I'm arguing that it's wrong. That's all.

I'd read all your posts and you only "declared" that it's morally wrong. You didn't present any argument to support your claim. I am not saying that there is no existing valid arguments, just pointing out that you forgot the most important part in your post.

That's why people are second guessing you by asking "who is hurt?" and things like that.

You're right.

OP asked A or B. I said neither because neither addressed the fundamental underlying issue: that it's wrong. I changed the focus of the question without backing up my claim by presenting an argument. So I got second guessed, a logical development.

This presents me with a dilemma. I could present philosophical arguments about why it's wrong or I could just "wave my hands" and say it's outside the scope of this thread.

People may not like it (and I may lose this "debate"), but I choose to do the latter.

I could cop out and claim that Hacker News is a community for fellow hackers and business people to learn and share together, so a philosophical discussion of right and wrong borders on the religious and doesn't belong here.

Or I could say no one would win such a debate, so why bother just getting people upset?

I think I'll take the third option, which probably puts me in the worst light, but...

If I have to debate right and wrong with you, let's just say that I'd rather not debate at all and move on to doing business with someone who thinks a little more like me.

Can you at least say why you think it's immoral? You don't have to stick around and defend your belief.

I didn't assume. Hence the question mark.

So, if it's not true that someone is hurt by every movie download, then why are the movie downloads, where no one is hurt, ethically wrong? Why is "it's not hurting anyone" a bad ethical argument in the cases where it's factually accurate?

I put myself through university and gained extensive skills using pirated software. At the time I decided I would do what needed to be done and because I could. I resolved however to get licensed copies once I was working.

7 years later I have an annual budget of £2.3 million and am responsible for buying decisions relating to the software we use. Autodesk, Macromedia (until a while ago) and Adobe have all been represented largely.

All I can say is that at the time, I used software piracy to my advantage - now I am trying to repay my debt.

Reminds me of this: http://www.learnitfirst.com/AboutUs/CorporatePhilosophy.aspx

"...many of us thirty-somethings wouldn't be where we are today if we hadn't coughfoundcough a copy of Windows NT4 somewhere. Don't steal our stuff, please. We try to make it inexpensive enough so that anyone can afford it."

disclaimer: I founded LearnItFirst.com :)

i think almost every s/w professional from BRIC have used pirated s/w - in fact i read this somewhere that we would have huge skills shortage if there were no pirated s/w available to these smart people of 3rd world countries ... and if the s/w professional were in shortage then prices of tons of products (from air line tickets to chocolate bars) would be much higher than what it is right now ... so in a sense pirated product did created jobs and revenue and economy .... it gave an opportunity to smart people to learn new skills and get employment.

Amen do that! I would have never learned Photoshop or Dreamweaver without pirated software. This was me in college. Doing that under your own company would be a bad thing to do. Don't risk it unless your using the software for personal education gain.

The upside to buying software as a student is that these companies sell them with a massive discount..or give them away for free. The downside being it's usually only for noncommercial usage.

like bigtoga said We wouldn't be here where we are today - and this is same with almost all s/w creator ...

agreed I've pirated s/w which would have been to expensive to buy purely to learn new skills, however I suppose, I was lucky when I was taking my first steps with Photoshop my uncle bought me a copy.

Overheard from This Week in Media (http://www.pixelcorps.tv/this_week_in_media):

Post-production houses and graphical design companies often demand that all job applicants already have Photoshop experience. Yet for someone who doesn't already have a job, they can't afford Photoshop in order to get experience. The unspoken industry solution is that everyone has a pirated copy of Photoshop for personal use.

Also mentioned is that the big 3D modeling/rendering packages that everyone uses for production work (3D Studio, Maya, and LightWave) also happen to be the most pirated 3D software. Coincidence? Is the dog wagging the tail, or is the tail wagging the dog?

Many jobs also require college degrees, yet it isn't an unspoken industry solution for first-time job applicants to lie on their resumes because they couldn't afford to go to college. So this "unspoken industry solution" of pirating Photoshop strikes me more as a rationalization for why someone wanted to pirate rather than an explanation of why they needed to pirate.

(Never mind that art schools cost a lot more than Photoshop, teach Photoshop, sell Photoshop at discounted student rates, etc.)

"though no one explains how and from where these numbers came from"

I think those are just poor understanding of economics. Hope I don't say anything incredibly stupid, but the money has to come from somewhere. It seems more likely that the economy would suffer if more people would pay for software, because doing business would become more expensive. Or maybe it is just zero-sum (either the pirates get to spend the money, or the software vendors, but no additional wealth is being created).

Not saying I would decide for 1 or 2. Morals are a difficult issue. Is something immoral, just because it is against the law? What if I don't agree with the law? I am from Germany, so I have been taught that there can be times when the laws themselves are immoral.

I can't blame some poor 3rd world person to pirate a game or a movie that they otherwise would never be able to afford - I don't see the loss for the vendor? The usual counter is "games and movies are not essential for living", but I don't agree. I think people's lives should be worthwhile, too.

by the way law is sometimes created by the lobby - in short people who are going to gain a lot ... they own the politicians and make a law , which sometime is not acceptable by general public ... if a particular law is going to impact masses then why not to have referendum before making and passing a bill to create a law.

I've seen a similar argument when used with music: people download music, share it, and the pirated band sells more CDs as they gain fans (questionable) and draw bigger crowds (much more likely and doesn't help the record company in anyway).

However, unlike that, I think Side-1 has pretty strong merit - especially with the widespread availability of pirated software and the amount of people in college who want to use the software but can't afford it. If the software companies REALLY wanted to buck the trend, they'd license education software A LOT cheaper than it is right now. When I was in undergrad, I could buy Windows XP, Office, and Visual Studio anywhere from $10-20. I bought all three and never had to pirate a single piece of MS software.

I could download a lot of MS software for free because they have a partnership with my university.

I even used it to get WinXP to play some games. It's kind of strange to have a burned CD-R lying around - that is actually a legitimate copy.

I don't think it's strange.

The odd thing is I have literally a dozen legitimate serials (at the least) of Windows XP through MSDNAA and other sources, but I will still install a pirated copy with an activation crack. It's just waaaaayyyy less hassle in every way (plus the downloads tend to be slipstreamed with the latest updates, which is something I'm too lazy to do on a regular basis).

It's not just with music. it happens with books and movies and...name anything.

Also, depending on your school and how you got it, those three apps can be free. They were free for me from the school, and dreamspark is also free.

An example of how piracy helped a company: Macromedia.

Back in the 90s Adobe didn't had trials for their software on their website, and the software was usually lots of MB. Compare that to the old 30MB download of a Dreamweaver trial that you could easly find a crack off. If Adobe had done the same with GoLive (former Cyberstudio) at the beginning they would probably have owned the WYSIWYG HTML editor market.

Also with some different apps, tough Adobe's Livemotion never was a true competitor to Flash.

regarding side-1: I started out as a windows user using pirated copies in india... this discouraged me from using linux for quite some time, as we used to have phone modems and bandwidth was pathetic... one day i got a mandrake linux cd with a magazine... it was great fun using it, but gnome sucked then, but now i prefer linux over windows. so for windows at least, side-1 did not have any benefits. in fact, windows helped me start using computers and i 'converted' to linux!

i had another question: suppose a person cannot check out a book from a library (copy is out), so he downloads an ebook off the net and reads it, then deletes the copy as soon as he obtains the copy from the library.... so what effect did this 'piracy' have on the book producer? the book is quite old and i doubt whether the author (hint: amoeba) would be getting any big royalties on the book....

2 sides of the coin, it would be interesting to know which side is shinier for you :) if you were microsoft or oracle or ...

Love. Read "Pirate's Dilemma." Pirates are good for capitalism, good for society, good for the world. Anyone who stands in their way must die.

Ask YC: Which is better, Pepsi or Coke?