Reply To: Piracy good or bad

You make very good points, Theun. However, I'm a relativist so I think there are always multiple perspectives. :)

For example, some authors/developers have found that piracy is actually beneficial for them… they sell more/make more by having their work pirated by some people.

That said, I would never say that piracy is always good. There are many situations where it's clearly evil. Your example of someone pirating software and then charging less than non-pirates for the same work is a great example.

Someone pirating InDesign to do free flyers for their college is one thing. Pirating a bunch of copies for their company to publish books that they sell is very different.

No software company can make fine distinctions; they must fight piracy everywhere, all the time. Well, actually, that's not true… some companies do have different piracy rules for different groups: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10…..ussia.html