Piracy

Today a teacher at work asked me, with a completely straight face, why I wouldn't load a piece of software that she had bought in a store and paid $9.99 for onto EVERY student computer in two elementary schools (about 130 computers). When I explained to her that the license--that big, long agreement that she hit "Agree" to when she first installed the computer--granted her the right to install that piece of software on ONE computer, she made a "Pffff" sound with her mouth and said, "Oh! That company isn't even around anymore! What difference does it make?"

I don't mean to vilify this woman. On the contrary, her opinion isn't uncommon. Most people don't see intellectual theft as theft at all. They'll "rip" a friend's CD to their MP3 player and not think twice about it. They'll install Microsoft Office to their computer from a copy of a copy of a copy and not worry about the effort that went into the development of that program. It's just one copy, people say all of the time. No one cares.

But I care. I have to. It's part of my job at work to make sure that we are legally complying with our software licenses. So I get to be the bad guy and tell people what I said to this woman: "It makes a difference to ME. I want to be able to sleep at night knowing I have stolen anything--because whether you want to believe it or not, that's what intellectual theft is."

Boy, I just reread what I wrote, and all of that sounded grand. On the other hand, I seem to remember a couple of weeks ago renting RANGO from Amazon Instant Video ($3.99 for 24 hours), and when the 24 hours was up and the family hadn't yet finished the movie, trying to defeat the anti-piracy settings on my DVR and Roku player so that I could record the last 20 minutes for later viewing.

So maybe I don't have room to talk.