Its a complex topic, or at least, the themes it inevitably raises are. To stop writing an essay, i'll just leave some dot-points on my perspective: - Intellec

Its a complex topic, or at least, the themes it inevitably raises are. To stop writing an essay, i'll just leave some dot-points on my perspective: - Intellectual property doesn't make any sense to me. It seems more like a cultural practice rather than intellectual one, and just comes across as absurd. So someone trying to justify things based on it might as well be telling me what some god I don't believe in thinks about my sins... - Its good, if you've got the resources to do so, to try to support people financially who produce things you like/use. The easiest way to do this is buying their stuff/sending them money. - Its bad in general to be parasitical on the work of another, or dishonest about how/what you've done... - The market/distribution of resources amongst society/law is not a moral authority, so the fact that a person has ownership over something, or that a certain product is for sale in a certain market for a certain price with certain barriers/conditions, doesn't imply anything universally, for or against. It is relatively easy to think of scenarios where i think its justified to participate in, or ignore, or fight against, any of those things. So the long and short of it is that if you've got the money and you can support the author/creator of something that you like/use, you should find a way to get some of your money to them. You should REALLY do it if you're using it to make money yourself. But i'm not going to lose sleep if a pimply teenager somewhere plays a game they didn't buy, people lend books, people copy software amongst their computers, use pirated software for their own education but don't make money from it, or people pirate where a market fails them in their ability to provide money to the creator/author at reasonable terms/price. I'm not going to pretend I have a prescriptive solution for all of society. I think my rule of financially support the creators/authors of things you use if you can is a good personal rule of thumb, but i'd never seriously consider chasing up people copying my own work as long as they weren't trying to literally take credit for it and making substantial money via its use...