First, let me define what I consider warez for this article. Warez is any mass of digital 0s and 1s that is obtained illegally. This includes games, applications, mp3s(although I would only consider a full album of mp3s for a CD you don't own as warez), and other things. Now let's get to the meat of the article.
I'll begin with the school of thought that downloading warez is the same as shoplifting. These types of people like to ask "You wouldn't go into a store and steal software off the shelf would you?!" In response to which I roll my eyes dramatically. The differences are major. First, stealing off the shelf takes a lot more determination and you are showing your willingness to steal even though you're at a major risk of being caught. If you're willing to risk being caught then you probably are farther off the path to moral correctness, if there is such a thing. Second, by stealing the software, you are also stealing the physical disc and packaging. This may not seem like a big deal, but if you have stolen things laying around, you're more likely to develop a guilty conscience, whereas with downloading warez, there is no "evidence" to make you feel guilty. Finally, downloading warez is relatively easy and "everybody is doing it!"
Next is the idea that downloading warez hurts the people who developed the product in question. I would agree this is true, to a degree. It hurts them if you download warez instead of buying the product. They are losing money in this case. But I would argue that a lot of people who download warez are not doing it instead of buying products. If they weren't downloading warez, they wouldn't be buying products instead, they simply wouldn't have the product. Now whether that's better or worse in the developer's opinion, I don't know. It's possible they would be happy that more people are using their product, even if they didn't buy it; or they might think that people who don't pay for the product don't deserve to use it. It's also virtually impossible to tell if someone is using warez instead of buying, or using warez because they wouldn't be buying regardless. This debunks the major argument certain organizations have against piracy, that it is costing people jobs and hurting the economy. It's not going to make any difference either way if the people downloading warez weren't going to buy the product anyway. I know in lesser developed countries piracy runs rampant and major corporations are pirating software for use by their employees, but I'm talking about individuals in this article.
The last issue is kind of pathetic and I wouldn't include it but some organizations seem to think this is an important argument against piracy. That is that you can't get technical support for the product, or that warez may contain viruses. Of course it's true that you don't get technical support from the developer when you don't buy the product. There are other places to get support, for example newsgroups. Even some warez communities provide support for their warez or offer a forum so users can provide support to each other. It's also true that warez may contain viruses, but honestly who doesn't run a virus scanner. Using this argument maybe we should get rid of e-mail too, because hey, there could be a virus in there.
So.. this is the end of the article, and I promised a conclusion, right? Well, I'm sorry but I can't give a definitive yes or no. If you can afford to, buy things instead of downloading them. Support developers. It will help them keep giving us what we want in the future. If you can't afford to buy everything you would download, just suffer without it. I won't recommend anyone to download warez, I won't say it's stealing, and I also won't say it's not stealing. I'm so ambiguous..
I know I'm leaving things out, like abandonware. Maybe I'll do a follow-up article if this one is well received.
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zig