[picardythird]

So are you against torrenting copyrighted digital goods then? Because people do exactly that. They steal intellectual property and distribute it for other people to use.

Stealing for personal use may be a more minor thing, but it still boggles me that people want to consume the fruits of others' labor without compensating them in anyway, as if creators are slaves who exist only to please.

[webmaven]

I made no claim about the relative morality of piracy vs. license violations.

But I will note that you are (by using the framing of "stealing") implying that piracy results in lost sales, which is largely not the case, except possibly for the most popular works. See "Piracy is Progressive Taxation":

https://www.oreilly.com/content/piracy-is-progressive-taxati...

[picardythird]

If a publisher or author doesn't mind, as is the case with the article you linked, that's fantastic. O'reilly is a good business. But it's still stealing. I think if you have the money, you should pay for the product. It's one thing for a teenager to download a bunch of songs on Kazaa in 2000. But I don't understand why so many self respecting adult knowledge workers feel the need to pirate things they can afford just because they can. Seems entitled and disrespectful to me.