Oooooh, good question, you’d better tell me where he’s downloading them from, so I can better examine the issue…
(
Never mind, just joking, I expect it’s a peer-to-peer deal, which I steadfastly won’t do anyway, even for legal purposes.)
Stealing, technically yes, but I still have a hard time seeing damage when someone has a property, does NOTHING to make it available for sale to make money off it, then complains when someone shares it for free. They weren’t deprived of anything, because they never offered it themselves. The purpose of patent and copyright law is for the public good, to encourage innovation by allowing the creator exclusive money-making rights
for a limited period; the fact that it is a limited period (at least that was the original idea) is to encourage the steady creation of new work instead of milking the same cow forever.
That really strikes me more like a child who has a toy that he hasn’t played with in months, ignores it on the shelf, but as soon as another child picks it up, goes screaming MIIIIIIIINE! and hits the other child until he drops it, just because it’s HIS. And then goes back to ignoring it.
