The new “stealing is ok” culture

I’m not one to support American border guards checking laptops at the borders for stolen material. Or the hundreds of thousands of dollar fines that the RIAA dishes out. Or software and music companies slapping DRM on everything. I also believe in fair use. However I find it puzzling how people can just steal software, movies, books and music and think that to be ok.

As a software developer if I had spent hours and hours (and hours) developing an application to support myself (or a family) and I put it up for sale, how is it ok for someone to go onto bittorrent or limewire and get it for free. I can imagine that film makers, authors and artists feel the same.

Would you ever hire a builder to build a house then not pay him? No. So why is it different with software, music and movies? Would you steal a book from a shop? No.

Right now I sound like the anti-piracy ads:

However I do think it’s becoming a growing problem and that people do it just because it’s easy and that the internet generation are going to cause a revolution in how a product is financed since we/they are starting to expect to get everything for free.