There are a lot of things considered socially acceptable, that really shouldn't be.
Stealing someone's work should be considered wrong, the issue of you selling it on is neither here nor there - you don't have a right to it.
Really there is no excuse today, there is plenty of "free" (both as in beer and speech) software. If you want to build a PC you need not buy ANY software at all, if you don't want to. You can have a system that can get on the Internet, send/receive email, chat, create "office" documents - pretty much anything. But if you want something with a Microsoft logo on it, you really should PAY FOR IT.
Simple.
Legality aside for a moment, can you say that you have never downloaded something you shouldn’t have? Or are you a prolific copyright infringer and think nothing of it?
A recent study conducted by the Danish Rockwool Foundation Research Unit found that 70% of respondents found that piracy for personal use is ’socially acceptable’.
While social acceptance may be subjective from one person to another, 15-20% of the totall group found that downloading again for personal use is ‘totally acceptable’.
However, when asked whether it is acceptable to download something illegally and then sell it on for a profit, three-quarters said that would be ‘completely unacceptable’.
As MSNBC rightly point out, the Danish demographic does not represent on the global scale, more so a localised perspective in a region where piracy and file sharing laws are considered the most lax.
Mass lawsuits do not deter users from pirating, nor does a three strike Internet ban. According to one, if the record labels and wider industry want piracy to lessen, focusing on areas of disincentives and promoting easier and less convoluted ways to access media, rather than pirating.
As for now, the vast majority of the legally bought music comes from iTunes. I don’t know about you, but it’ll be a cold day in hell when I install iTunes on my machine - even if others can tweak it to remove the crapware from it.
