Does it ever cease?

[Cyberus]

Apologies to moderators if you'd rather it wasn't brought up again...but I'm gonna do it anyway! ;-)  But there was a thread, for all of twenty minutes, started by a guy asking if there was anywhere on the net he could downloand OS3.9..and wait for it....OS4!

Of course, I didn' t bother with the moral high ground, and instead childishly replied with:

Har har har! Arrrrrgh!

 

He didn't get the message however, and even PM'd me asking where he could find Amiga warez!!

But it really does make me sick - IMO piracy helped wipe out the Amiga (for all intents and purposes), and yet people want to pirate a piece of software that might have sold, what (and this really IS a guess) 10000 copies?

While purists would argue that wrong is wrong, no matter what the circumstances, piracy of an Amiga OS is a hundred times more damaging than a dodgy copy of XP - and which one has the most protection....

An analogy I always like to use:
If you steal from a small shop, you probably won't get caught, even if you do, the family that runs it doesn't have the money or the time to prosecute you.
If you steal from a supermarket chain, there'll be CCTV, store security, and they certainly WILL prosecute.

Now in the first case, this is how I see it. You are essentially stealing from that guy's table - that's the money he uses to feed his family, and keep a roof over their heads.
In the second case, you just make up a tiny proportion of the company's expected losses (theft, breakages, stock out of date etc).

Who's it worse to steal from?

[Cyberus]

@ meerschaum

As has already been mentioned by others, it was the fact that he wanted a copy of OS3.9/OS4. If he had asked for Lemmings, or Shadow of the Beast or whatever, I wouldn't have been so indignant.

Cheers

[Cyberus]

I think it is dangerous to rationalise how stealing can be worse in some cases than others.

Oh I agree, but I personally think situations should often be looked at on merit, applying law or judgement blindly can be just as dangerous.
Despite the fact that theft is theft is theft, I still find it difficult to say that stealing a pear from an orchard as you walk along the road is as 'wrong' as some #### breaking into an old lady's house and stealing the last gift given to her by her late husband.

edit: Perhaps that example is a bit crap, perhaps two items of similar monetary value would be a better example! Hey, we could get into a full-blown discussion about ethics here if we ain't careful!