This is exactly what I am thinking. If we expect others to respect our software licenses, why don't we respect others' license on creative content they produce, no matter how outlandishly priced or badly delivered we believe it to be?
What baffles me is the amount of rationalisation. I come from Russia, where piracy is a social norm, and if you pay full official price for entertainment products, you are either a sucker, or a rich person asserting your wealth status (I don't imagine much has changed). But Russians never attribute themselves downloading movies and cracking games to some higher purpose: we just like free stuff, and gaming the system for personal gain is a national pastime.
Just because some people copy and think they're stealing doesn't mean that the people who think copying is moral are rationalizing. This assumes the correctness of copyright and dumps the arguments against it as rationalization, without providing any argument in favor of copyright.
I don't think it's bad. I grow up in a time where it's normal that all information are free. I already have to pay fee's on electronic devices like printers, hard drives, DVDs etc. so this should be enough.
I'm sorry, but I still don't live in that time. I have to pay to get to academic journals to read that information. I have to pay to watch television live. What sort of world are you living in where information is already all free?
File sharing is normal for people today. I grew up with it and all people in my class exchanged games, music, movies etc. each other. Now I started working and it's nearly the same. I understand your point, of course. Music, Movies etc. are still protected by copyright, but I don't want to pay for a crappy service e.g DVD, which includes copyright violation warnings, previews of other movies and copy protection if I can get a better service for free. But I'll probably purchase the Tom Lowe movie, because he is a cool guy and offer the movie TimeScapes in various formats.
What baffles me is the amount of rationalisation. I come from Russia, where piracy is a social norm, and if you pay full official price for entertainment products, you are either a sucker, or a rich person asserting your wealth status (I don't imagine much has changed). But Russians never attribute themselves downloading movies and cracking games to some higher purpose: we just like free stuff, and gaming the system for personal gain is a national pastime.