Living in developing country you learn to ignore copyright or you never learn anything. I don't know if it was invented as a way for developed countries to keep competive advantage, but it sure would work that way if people actually obeyed.
As a poor person growing up in Britain I hold the same viewpoint.
The whole argument around piracy and copyright seems to revolve around this idea of being 'too cheap' or 'not wanting to support'.
When 10GBP for some music or 100+GBP for some software package (Office, for example) is 50% or more of your monthly pay, or you have no income at all, none of those factors come in to the decision. It's the only realistic way. Would I download a car? Sure, if I could.
Thankfully nowadays with the proliferation of OSS it's much easier. And personally I've been lucky enough that now I can afford such things. But to an 18 year old me, mumblings about 'lost profits' are just rich world problems.
It's an open secret that Adobe and Microsoft had a model of non-enforcing piracy for private use, and I think it's pretty good. It's totally fair to charge business licenses, but in the area of education and science, limiting access is holding back the progress of the entire human race.
Greed is trying to capture all the value you create. Don't do it. Let others have some, and then they'll happily let you have some of theirs.
Although I doubt Adobe and Microsoft did this out of altruism: By allowing piracy of their software for private use, it became widely used, and at work people wanted to continue using the software they knew -- this time paying for it.
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