Piracy police arrest Nottingham man, 20

[JimC]

People aren't decent because its natural they act based on reward and punishment. The widespread nature of software piracy shows that most people will be steal if they think they can get away with it

In a different life you would have made a good Christian Brother...

[MrJonno]

People aren't decent because its natural they act based on reward and punishment. The widespread nature of software piracy shows that most people will be steal if they think they can get away with it

In a different life you would have made a good Christian Brother...

Then so would Richard Dawkins, the it doesnt take god to be good but does take plenty of police ( I added the bit about a big stick) comes straight from 'The God Delusion.'

There is nothing supernatural about human beings being wild animals that need to be civilized , however christianity did decide to call it 'original sin'.

We probably have enough empathy to not randomly kill each other for a laugh but its nowhere near strong enough to prevent robbery, fraud and general other nastiness, that takes fear of punishment mostly by the police but by society in general plays a part too

[pErvinalia]

The world according to Jonno. Love it!

[MrJonno]

The number of people who try to justify software piracy somewhat proves my point

[PsychoSerenity]

The widespread nature of software piracy shows that most people will be steal if they think they can get away with it

The number of people who try to justify software piracy somewhat proves my point

Except you are equating copyright infringement with stealing when they are categorically different and there are perfectly valid justifications for the former. People can't inherently get away with copyright infringement by using torrents - most of it could be traced and tracked, - the reason they get away with it is that it's impossible to enforce a law when nearly everyone is breaking it. The same could apply to stealing except most people don't consider laws against stealing to be wrong or petty or irrelevant, so they don't break them if they can avoid it. A perfectly valid way to challenge a law you consider wrong is to break it along with everyone else, regardless if you fear punishment or not. Another way is to be actively involved with politics, which is why there is an elected Member of the European Parliament for the Pirate Party. There isn't an everyone-can-steal-anything party.

[MrJonno]

The differences between copyright infringement and theft are purely academic , not to mention both illegal.

People don't steal software/moves as a political point , they do so because they something for free and know no one can stop them. It's no more complicated than that.

While it shouldnt be a crime to campaign to change the law the second a political actually encourages people to so the law should step in. Don't know if the piracy party actually cross that boundary but I hope they are watched very carefully

I disagree about people not stealing physical things due to morality, you seriously think shop staff are there to to help you buy something. They are there to stop you stealing stuff. Almost certainly if a shop got rid of all it staff it could reduce its prices and still make more profit but only if the public didnt just empty their shop