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They are also the group who are most fearless, believing that whatever risks they take, somehow nothing bad will ever happen to them.
Pirating and using warez (cracked software) now seems to be very common and something that many people seem to do regardless of whether they can afford it or not.
I disagree that they are like modern "Robin Hoods" and that they are more like "Robin Bas***ds" as they are stealing and depriving the rightful owner of an income.
I think there will always be a demand for pay for software all the time that Microsoft are the dominant force in the market. I do think that their dominance is now waning as Open Source becomes better but it still amazes me how many people have not heard of Open Source software or Linux.
There is a big difference. Robin hood (allegedly) stole from the rich, who had made their wealth from taxing the poor and gave it back to the poor, whereas these crackers steal from anyone and give to anyone. Like I have said these thieves do not discriminate or disenfranchise just the rich and will crack anything for the challenge, that is the problem. You can even get cracked "shareware"
quote"I think there is more to it than the strength of Microsoft"For sure but look at what's happening in the "One Laptop Per Child" project.Microsoft and Intel because of their domination are playing politics with the above and stifling its progress. They don't like the fact that it was to use AMD cpu's and a cut down version of the free Linux system so what has happened. They are now promoting their own OLPC using Intel chips and with a cut down version of Windows installed. This OLPC version now has to have a hard drive because of the bloated nature of Windows and this will allow other Windows compatible programs to run on it, thus keeping the MS dominance alive.
Despite all the hype that software piracy forces up prices because legitimate buyers have to pay more for their products, the reality is that often software piracy forces down the market price to make piracy seem a less attractive contrast (many people who might be willing to spend a small some of money to stay legal, would be far more willing to go outside the law if they think the product is overpriced, or the restrictions on the legal ownership of the product are too onerous).
It does not matter what the cost is, or comes down to. people will still want to download for free, you can legally download your favourite song or tv programme for about £1. yet people still download, because they can and its free - even if windows was sold for £1 it would still be pirated and downloaded.It's nothing to do with price or overpriced, the net is there and you get stuff for free. why do people have broadband (the majority of)? because you can download illegal stuff quicker, oh the ads will tell you that you can check emails quicker and send photos. but who the heck cares about that? the majority of people have broadband so they can download pirated stuff.
Just one illegal site had over 4 million hits per day! per day!
The vast majority of internet users do download pirated material for one reason or another.
The ISPs could stop this, but dont. Why?
Even then you can still hide your ip address from them, pirating is never going to end. there is a growing market and we as a society want it, we want it now and we want it for nothing.