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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Harry" data-source="post: 1541938" data-attributes="member: 5468">It is reasonable to think that some of the downloads might possibly have been by the same people at different times, appearing as different IP's.  That seems reasonable.    What I cannot agree with is the leap that the author loses nothing if the material is stolen, er, downloaded, by someone who "wouldn't have bought the product anyway."  If a thief breaks into a bookstore and steals merchandise, has the thief only stolen a value equal to what the thief could have paid for?  The most apparent difference between this case and the cases being discussed is that the material stolen has definite physical reality, but shouldn't that just be changed to the price of printing the books, in this view?    If someone receives the, I guess I'll call it the "commercially useful portion", of a product (the information in a book, the ability to listen to a piece of music) without paying a price to the vendor, then the material has been stolen.  I don't see the moral high ground to downloading for free what normally has a price.   There seems to be a perception that the individual has a genuine right to have access to material produced by a second party, and if the work is unavailable (by being OOP), or if the price of the goods are above what the indidvidual in question thinks is appropriate, then the individual has the right (it almost seems like it is being considered an absolute moral imperative) to get the material for less/free - by any means necessary.  I would like to see this addressed.  So if someone has decided that they weren't willing to pay the asking price on a product, then they have the moral right to grab it illicitly?  I don't get your logic at all.  If you are saying that this theft is all right because the source wasn't going to see any money for it anyway, then I disagree in that   if the material has "no value" to them dowloader, why do they have it?  If the response is that they were always going to have budgeted for other things, then their decision-making process was altered by the idea that they was something they wanted enogh to take that they didn't have to pay for.      What is the "right" someone has to someone else's work?</blockquote>

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