I totally agree. This stupid argument comes about for one reason, and one reason only: the law has not yet caught up with technology.
No, it's not stealing. Yes it is wrong - if you don't pay for creative content, content creators won't create, which is a bad outcome for society (and no, don't give me any crap about people creating for free - sure, some might, but I certainly wouldn't be spending my weekends and nights writing an application if I didn't think I'd get some money for it, and I doubt that I'm rare!).
This is where governments are supposed to do their jobs - create laws to encourage desirable behaviour. For example, they could start passing laws to make it illegal to publicly share copyright-protected works. They could also make it illegal to facilitate the sharing of copyright-protected works, putting operations such as TPB under pressure.
Better than just making it a law, make it one of the conditions of membership in the WTO - it's a logical activity for the WTO anyhow, seeing as an increasing percentage of world trade is IP. That way, there is a powerful tool available to force compliance at an international level.
I'm curious - do you actually think that there are people reading Hacker news that don't know about these projects?
Obviously I, and everyone else here, is aware of them, which should have clued you in that you had misread me. I didn't say that no-one will develop software for free, I said that I don't do it, and that I suspect that I'm far from unique.
Besides, if you look, you'll discover that many of the developers on those projects are getting paid for it, one way or another.
No, it's not stealing. Yes it is wrong - if you don't pay for creative content, content creators won't create, which is a bad outcome for society (and no, don't give me any crap about people creating for free - sure, some might, but I certainly wouldn't be spending my weekends and nights writing an application if I didn't think I'd get some money for it, and I doubt that I'm rare!).
This is where governments are supposed to do their jobs - create laws to encourage desirable behaviour. For example, they could start passing laws to make it illegal to publicly share copyright-protected works. They could also make it illegal to facilitate the sharing of copyright-protected works, putting operations such as TPB under pressure.
Better than just making it a law, make it one of the conditions of membership in the WTO - it's a logical activity for the WTO anyhow, seeing as an increasing percentage of world trade is IP. That way, there is a powerful tool available to force compliance at an international level.