Violating the law is not an effective measure of protest - it is a self-serving, greedy form of pseudo-protest that is oblivious to the respect of the law. If everyone violated every law they deemed bad, then we would all be living locked in concrete cells to hide from the hordes of maurauding anarchist bandits out to kill us for the gold in our fillings.
Now certainly this is a thread ostensibly (or at least originally) about software piracy, but I cannot in good conscience allow such a grotesque generalization pass unnoticed - the most pathetic, most moronic statement I've ever heard! Why don't you go tell that to Jesus Christ, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Andrei Sakharov, anyone who harbored runaway slaves in 19th century America, anyone who harbored Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe (shall I continue?) - ALL of whom were knowingly, willingly and (yes) bravely violating existing LAWS. I'll leave it to you to consider just how effective their respective protests were, OK?
The fact of the matter is that some (actually many) laws are simply unjust and outright immoral and it's incumbent upon any decent person to disobey them. If you are in need of a refresher of such ideas, then I refer you to The Declaration of Independence, for starters.
Sorry, but your argument is based on a false generalization, before winding its way into a slippery slope argument. Bad logic, in other words.
But there does indeed seem to be a lot of bad logic and baffling inconsistency bouncing around the Macrumors forums lately.
Funny to read here actual clamoring (!) for Apple to install security measures, product activation, etc. when I can recall the drubbing Microsoft got - and rightly so! - in these very forums for doing the very same thing in the not too distant past. Ergo, if Microsoft and that mean old Bill Gates does it, it's bad, if Apple does it, it's good? Uh-huh. "Well, Apple is a business." So sayeth the slavish zealots. So what does that Microsoft then? Uh, I guess Microsoft has enough money; they have no real need of any more, but if Apple wants to gouge me, well, that's OK!
Here's some common sense for you: neither the RIAA, the MPAA, Microsoft, Apple Inc., Adobe or anyone else has ever been able to produce a shred of actual proof that piracy = lost sales. Because it does not. Those who pirate fall into one of two general categories:
1) Would not purchase the product anyway
2) Could not afford to purchase the product
All those kids happily downloading on Carracho and Hotline are not feeling grateful that they've just managed to save themselves $600 for Photoshop 7.0 and have instead decided to spend the money saved on jeans and bubblegum. If they even had the $600, believe me, sending it all to Adobe is most definitely not something that has ever cropped up on even the lowest reaches on their list of spending priorities. In other words, no lost sale here.
As for 2), piracy runs rampant in countries which are POOR. It doesn't take an economist to figure out the logistics of this. Microsoft Windows is the single most common pirated program in China (if not the world) SIMPLY BECAUSE THE AVERAGE CHINESE PERSON CANNOT AFFORD MICROSOFT'S ASKING PRICE. If MS offered Windows at a price that the populace could afford, do you really believe that there would be any problem with Windows piracy in China? Of course not!
Now you may call these "pirates" immoral, against cosmic law and the right hand of the lord's justice, whathaveyou (as someone here did), but I ask you to consider just where your Apple computers came from in the first place, and just who actually put them together.
And to whoever it was who had the audacity to judge the gentleman from Venezuela, calling him an immoral pirate and whatnot, well, consider this, Mac users: your precious Macs and the components which constitute them are being manufactured and assembled by low-wage, exploited third world laborers, who, believe you me, are most definitely NOT being paid enough to ever dream of being able to afford one of the damn things. This is a FACT. (Average maquiladora factory wage in Mexico: $6 per day - yep, even the imac assembly factory; average tech factory wage in China: less than $2 per day.) Why don't you ask a teenage girl working at an Apple assembly plant in one of these places if she thinks Steve Jobs is a visionary, all-conquering hero? I am certain that you will get a much different perspective than you would at Macrumors, I guarantee you that.
Now you may call these "pirates" immoral, against cosmic law and the right hand of the lord's justice, whathaveyou (as someone here did). So if such people pirate/pilfer copies of Windows or Final Cut Pro or whatever, well, who are you to judge? That's pretty moderate and generous compared to what some there would perhaps prefer to do. That is, line up corporate America in front of the firing squad for human rights violations, environmental damages, and gross exploitation of labor (in most cases, child labor).
What you really saying is that it's A-OK for these people to make your products for slave wages, but - hot damn - be sure to condemn them to mighty hell for having the uppity audacity to wish to have a small portion of the fruits of their labor.
I'm serious. When you fork out that money for your next Power Mac or TiBook or Jaguar OS, why don't you take one look at the sticker on the box/computer which tells you where it was manufactured, where it was assembled. One thing it will NOT say is "Made and assembled by union workers in USA/Canada/European Union"). Think about that for a long minute. And if any of the people involved in making the thing have managed to pilfer some software discs or have somehow managed to walk out of the factory with a Power Mac or Cinema Display screen, well, I say more power to them. Small compensation, actually.
Meanwhile, I invite the anti-piracy zealots here to volunteer to work for $3 a day at a Mac assembly factory. Let's say Macs expressly for the Chinese market. No, you'll never be able to afford one yourself on what you're being paid - food and rent will be your primary struggle in life. But at least you'll be making somebody, somewhere happy. Any volunteers?
