kol

the sad thing is that it really is not a laughing matter.

to be honest it is not so much the act of stealing that bothers me about piracy.

it is more the nonchalance if not sense of entitlement with which it is done.

go out in the street and ask a car thief wether or not he has a right to he car he is ripping off. he will likely say n o. he will explain it by having to feed his family, his drug addiction or simply because it is easier than getting a real job.

ask a software/audio/video pirate and the odds are good that you will hear something along the lines of:"i am entitled to this, the record companies/labels/studios are stealing from us. information should be free. noone should be forced to pay for xxx. (no, get your mind out of the gutter. not porn. just item x.)

if you want free software, fine. go and grab yourself a linux or freebsd or whatever. but if you want software that people are getting paid to create, market and maintain then pony up the cash.

sorry about getting into this rant. again. but this isn't communism, it is capitlism. there are rules you have to play by for the system to work. and there is no such thing as a free ride.

as for the rate of theft roco quoted, i believe it. i worked in the fairly well observable computer department of a circuit city type store and we had everything of any value at all locked away or heavily outfitted with anti-theft devices. we still had a 1.5 percent rate of attrition for the department.

it is a sad fact that there is little to no acknoledgement of wrongdoing when people buy pirated disks or download off the web.

they say they are just hirting the evil riaa/mpaa/whomever suits them.

if you break the copyright rules you are hurting the artists or programmers.

i grant you that the record companies pocket most of the cash, but that is an issue the artists that sign the contracts that let them do so have to deal with. if the works are ripped off however, the artist/programmer gets no money at all. now, would you rather have a little money or none at all?

at the local fleamarkets there are usually tables of cd's/dvd's with ripped albums/movies/screeners and usually several places that sell ripped games. sometiumes they will set up a table of disks right by the side of the road, advertising 1 dvd 5$, 5 for 20.

the copsa ignore it.

it being a federal crime, i have called the FBI on multiple occasions reporting the location of these stands.

ik was told that there was nothing they could do. if they went out to arrest them the DA wouldn't want to prosecute them. they said the only thing that would do any good is if i could tip them off to one of the manufacturers of the copies. i was told to contact customs as they were setting up a taskforce o go after these people and they might have the manpower to do something.

so i call into the fbi reporting a federal crime, all they would have o do is drive up and collect these guys and they say they can't do it because the DA is too lazy? wtf is up with that?

the law should be the law, no matter what. if the record compoanies/movie studios/software houses screw the artists/workers/programmers, fine, they can organize themselves and do something like the writers strike. but don't use the "evil" riaa/mpaa/bsa as an excuse to commit a crime. that is so pathetically childish,