I'm not suggesting that the crime is acceptable, just the fact that your average person would condem the thief who steals (in this case) money from the bank or your car or your TV. But that same person would happily copy their friend's CD/DVD/software.
Real case example, someone in the office I'm presently in was upset as some of the vouchers they'd sent out as an award for a corporate bonus scheme had been stolen in the postal system and were being used (these particular ones have no method of being identified during the transaction, only at the time the retailer cashes them in). However a week or 2 later they're loading their MP3 player at lunch time from a stack of CD-R's with the latest chart CD's copied to them.
The pile of CD's was probably a greater loss of revenue than the physical loss of the vouchers, but the CD's were acceptable and they were even offering to allow others to make further copies of the pirate copies.
The point I'm trying to make is that software piracy now seems to be a socially acceptable crime even to the middle classes. |