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Message: <blockquote data-quote="HamarSkald" data-source="post: 2483181" data-attributes="member: 35269">There are two factors that contribute to violation of intellectual property restrictions: 1.  Those who make unlicensed copies  are called "pirates", thus glamorizing them.  Calling them software thieves wouldn't give them the same association with action, adventure, and booty on the high seas.  Being associated with pirates and eyepatches and such is almost enough to turn me to "piracy". 2.  It's sooooooo easy.  The real hindrance to stopping the violation of intellectual property rights is that it is trivially easy to do in most cases.  Books, music, software, etc... are all readily available and there is no practical way to stop that.  People are apparently willing to scan in entire hardcopy books AND use optical character recognition software to render the text and then add bookmarks and even identifying marks to their "work".  Thse folks, who also labor to crack any DRM or other such technology, distribute the fruits of other people's labor on teh Intarweb where anyone with a computer can download it. It's easy to convince someone that walking out of a store without paying is wrong.  Most people will feel anxious and nervous and are afraid of getting caught.  Unfortunately, downloading illegal copies of software and books is easy and can be done in one's underpants in the middle of the night with no practical way of being caught. The real solution will be to find some way to make money off of publishing music, books, etc... without being dependent on artificial scarcity because there is no more scarcity when it comes to information that can be transmitted and copied with almost no cost. The above is not intended as a justification of piracy.  Today, we have laws protectint intellectual property and we don't have any alternate way for publishers, authors, etc... to make money.  Until such a system is available and is being used, we should all abide by the current laws. The above is intended, though, to point out the futility of the paper model of publishing in hte digital age.  The business model used by book and music publishers will change.  I have no idea what the future will hold, but it won't be one where easily copied data is treated like difficult to copy physical objects. Hamar</blockquote>

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