Piracy Not Theft

I read an article a long time ago about piracy. It asked whether pirating some software is the same as stealing. The article itself was not enlightening. But there were a lot of comments on the article. There were a bunch of great ideas buried in those comments.
 
There was a thread about telling software developers to stop whining about piracy. Digital goods almost want to be free. Many people conduct illegal activities. Software piracy is not immune to this. Copyright in general is abused. So will software.
 
Let’s get down to the nuts and bolts. The people who steal software were never going to actually buy the software. So there is no real missed opportunity for revenue. If that theft costs you some actual money, such as the cost for extra bandwidth for their downloads, maybe a developer has a beef. But this amount is probably going to be a lot less than the purchase price of the software.
 
The good thing is that not everyone know how to pirate software. You can put some safeguards and protection in there. None of that will be foolproof. But you might be able to make it hard enough to pirate software, so that it is easier for would be thieves to not do it or actually buy your software. This will be especially so if you prices are low.