Pirating out of necessity.

I think this is what happens to some people.

This is the scenario in developing nations such as India and China (almost 1/2 of the world):

-You earn < $3 a day. (75% of that is spent on food)
-Your child goes to school.
-Nation's forcing you to catch up with the West, so you buy your child a computer as pencil writing isn't formal anymore.
-You spend a few years of your savings just to get your child a 10 year old computer.
-Then you find out that your child needs a word processing program which costs even more than the computer.
-Then you find out that you can get the same software for $.25 (a meal). Why not?



In the US:
-If you have a job (not including illegal immigrants) you earn at least $40/day, you get food stamps and welfare.
-After other usages, you can still scrap enough money in a month to buy a computer and software.
-But instead, you screw yourself over with credit card loans and mortgage.
-You eat out too much and spend recklessly on fueling your car.
-Yet, you pirate. You try to defend yourself, but you have no good excuse other than something like "I hate the entertainment industry" or the software is simply too expensive.


I don't know how economic situations are like in Europe right now, but from living in Germany, I know that it's better than in the U.S.

So I propose this, increase the popularity of Open Source software such as Linux and Open Office, hoping that one day people do not have to worry about not being able to feed their families all due to the technology rush.

Or, you can let the poor pirate out of Necessity.

reply to post by die_another_day


when you mentioned open source software a lightbulb lit in my brain. Could the final solution to the pirating problem be to eliminate all rights to electronic works? If every program was open source, their would be no big deal about pirating. But so many people make a living off of it yes I agree. It very well could be that software ownership and licensing is a failed attempt at sucessfully capitalizing on electronic information. Maybe there needs to be a way totally different than current software licensing techniques. There are flaws to my idea I understand as , lack of motivation to make a superior product, and lack of our capitalistic cultures basic structure.

I feel the only thing that will actually work in this situation is for corporate and government agencies and companies to manufacture and implement a propaganda machine to put a huge guilt trip on pirates and make it very un-cool and if you got caught doing it all your peers would make fun of you. Then we would see a change. Get ready for the propaganda anti piracy wave, I'm sure they have already thought of it and will soon start to implement it. It will not come from the current RIAA, for their past efforts have failed and they are scared for life in credibility. It will be from a new credible source.

Open-source software is a community service... that is, people create it because they want to.

Commercial products aren't created because the programmers want to create it.

... Where does the open-source community require the funds to create and air a commercial?

Imagine if Open-Office, and Linux distros had their own commercials.

Soooo, if I understand your comparison/premise/justification, by the time Obama finishes his first term, and we as a nation financially migrate into the same camp as the Somali's we can all turn into pirates, and it's going to be OK?

Originally posted by dooper
Soooo, if I understand your comparison/premise/justification, by the time Obama finishes his first term, and we as a nation financially migrate into the same camp as the Somali's we can all turn into pirates, and it's going to be OK?

arn't we doing that already?

reply to post by die_another_day


Yes we are!

We are so far down the crapper, I can barely still make out daylight!