Thread: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
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Fargus is offline Fargus
2010-03-03 , 17:31
Posts: 1,217 | Thanked: 446 times | Joined on Oct 2009 @ Bedfordshire, UK
#232
Originally Posted by ewan View Post
It's not about the price per se, but a consequence of respecting the freedom of your users. You may or may not believe that people have a right to study, modify and share software, but some people do. Software freedom is like freedom of speech; you can't take it away from people by contract just because it's convenient for you to do so.
If they agree to the contract up front then why not? They have a freedom to choose another option so it is not a case of respecting their freedom at all. They are free to express their views as in free speech by choosing to not support or even to criticise the work, not to copy it directly without permission.

Originally Posted by ewan View Post
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That's a perfectly valid point of view. But it's not the only point of view. Clearly, there are a lot of people that don't, in practice, support it.
There is also a point of view that bashing people over the head and taking their goods and money is reasonable too but not one that I feel most people would claim as morally supportable.