I apologize in advance if my post causes this thread to get nasty, but I just want to speak my mind...
In the past few years at college, I've seen the internet file swapping programs get really out of hand. I go over to people's houses now, and they've got stacks of hundreds or even thousands of CDs of movies and music and software. It's getting to where I'll ask a friend if he wants to go see a movie, and he's already downloaded it and seen it. This finally came to a head just recently when I saw people coming into college classrooms with bootlegged textbooks or the local hobby store with copies of table-top RPG rulesets. It has so bad that I don't have a single friend anymore who actuallys buys anything. Not only this, but I've actually started to see a change in norms among my social groups, that people actually ridicule and look down on me if I purchase something that can be gotten off of the net.
It doesn't bother me that people download stuff off the net - this kind of thing happens all the time and you can't stop people from getting something for nothing when there's no penalty attached. Hell, I can't even stop myself from doing it - I've got Kazaa and I download music and anime every now and then too. And I've shared bootlegged anime with my friends for years... I'm not so naive as to get angry at people for being leeches - that's just human nature. It's like expecting people to pick up a ten dollar bill on the ground and turn it in to lost and found. Yeah, that money could have been important. Some single mother could have been relying on it to buy food for her children. But its just as likely that some snot-nosed teenager, whose parents are doctors, threw it on the ground because it had a bad crease it it or something. It's not possible or reasonable to expect people to hold up such a trivial moral case for themselves - that ten dollar bill is lost, and it's the responsibility of the person who lost it to see that it didn't get put in a place where anybody could get it.
What I blame is the ease of distribution of property created by the Net. There needs to be tighter laws and tighter restrictions on the kinds of file-swapping that goes on on the net. This kind of protection should start at the national governemnet level. And mark my words, we WILL see this day in our life-time, where it'll cost you money just to send a file to somebody outside of your country. IMO, this type of thing will HAVE to be done, for the protection of our society and our way of life.
But that's beside the point. What really bothers me is the fact that, as a lawfully abiding citizen who works hard for his money and spends it carefully on entertainment or other things, I am looked down upon by the "leech" social class. I couldn't tell you how many times in the last year I've heard the phrase, "You actually PAID for that!?!" It makes me so mad to hear that phrase sometimes. I can't even describe it. I don't understand the new generation of people coming behind me, who feel that getting things for free is cool, trendy, and a God-given right! I've had people laugh at me for spending my money on stuff that I could "get for free off the net." I suppose it that makes me "old" to say that, but I don't think it has anything to do with age.
Don't get me wrong, I love my fellow man. But nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see the grin wiped off some people's face for the amount of pirating they do, especially when they start trying to make money off of it or when they start looking down on their friends for not joining in their habits. Not only that, I expect others to have to pay, in some way or another, for the things that I have to pay for. It makes me mad sometimes to see other people getting things that I spent a lot of time working for. That's why we have laws and live in a civilized society, and people who take something they didn't earn are called "thieves". Something has to be done about the Net, but what or how... I just don't know.
I'm sorry if I upset some people...