Stealing and Piracy

As a sort of weird experiment, I recently asked my mates what the biggest thing they had ever stolen was (if anything). The results were amusing. Aside from quite a few people who had never stolen a thing, the worst anybody seemed to have done was stationery from work, or a couple of quid out of their mum's purse. My only run-in with stealing is I once took an extra Cadbury's hero out of the box on my teacher's desk when I was 12 (you were only meant to take one), and once when I was about 5 I took a penny sweet from our local newsagent, and then cried for about half an hour, overcome as I was by guilt for my petty larceny.

I think either I have really boring and law abiding friends, or they just don't get out much.

This all changed when I asked them if they download stuff from the internet very often. Oh, the number of times I heard "well, that's not really stealing... is it?" that day. Well, yes, it is sometimes. It's an infringement of copyright, and it's also theft if you don't pay for the things you download. I only know two people who use iTunes Music Store to download their music legally. Everyone else uses websites like BitTorrent, LimeWire, and others (it's hard to keep up with what has and hasn't been shut down recently).

Turns out as well that the UK government is going to crack down on it, apparently, by cutting off people's internet connections.

As a side note, I found this statistic from Wikipedia:

"According to a poll, 75% of young voters in Sweden (18-20) support file sharing when presented with the statement:

“

I think it is OK to download files from the Net, even if it is illegal.

”

However, there is a huge debate as to whether the amount of music downloaded is actually having a positive effect on CD sales, due to a lot of music being more accessible. Somehow I don't think it is. And it's not just music. Some friends had downloaded movies as well as music, and also computer software. It's not remotely difficult to do, but it doesn't make it right.

What do you think about downloading illegally?

To finish, have a look at a song about Piracy by Mr 'Weird' Al Yankovich, called 'Don't Download This Song'. You'll love it. (seriously).