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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 2721959" data-attributes="member: 19675">IP is not a negative good (a good that a producer will pay a consumer to take away)- it is a postive good ( a good a producer expects to be paid for to surrender control of it).  Sewage?  Now THAT is a negative good.The pirate is taking time (to which we can conceptually and legally assign an hourly wage equivalent) to research and download the product of others, and subsequently using up resources (memory, while incredibly inexpensive, is not free) to store it.  Thus, even though the value may be miniscule, it exists and is measurable.  At the very least, a pirate owes in equity "value (time spent to find and acquire) * value (allocated storage space)" to the person or company from whom he has pirated material.  If he actually USES any of it or passes it along to another person, there should be a use or handling charge.That a product is never used by the pirate is immaterial- if I buy a $0.50 ear of corn and let it rot on my kitchen counter, I've still acquired and wasted a consumer good.  If I steal the ear of corn and do the same, I owe that farmer (and his shipper, etc) that same amount.If I buy an option on a movie script and never use it, I cost the writer what is called an opportunity cost There, its the cost of him being able to shop it to someone else who might actually be interested in producing the script.Its only "free" because they have opted not to pay the creators for it.Perception is a powerful motivator.  In reality, fresh water is one of the most valuable substances on earth, yet we waste it in all kinds of ways because we don't factor all of the appropriate costs into acquiring & using it.  If we did, it would cost more than oil on an equivalent volume basis.Because pirated IP is percieved as free, and the acquisition of pirated IP is percieved by so many as an ethics-neutral or ethics-positive viewpoint, pro-piracy advocates don't percieve the actual costs of what they do.</blockquote>

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