I am all in favour of curbing people continuously downloading terrabytes of information because of the congestion and bandwidth hogging that this creates quite apart from the fact that it is, given current laws, theft.
In certain circumstances I see nothing wrong with the occasional download for personal use only.
However it must be said that Software developers & Performing artists and the agents that leech,sorry represent them have a massive advantage over say a builder, plumber or electrician etc when it comes to charging for their work.
Because their work can be recorded in either an analogue or digital format they can sell and resell and continue to resell the same bit of work over and over ad infinitum getting paid over and over again for the original, one off, bit of work they did.
Just playing the Devil's advocate here but perhaps an actor, musician or other performing artist should be paid per live performance only - recorded works should be freely available and would act as publicity for people to go and see them live - tough on the cinema-only actors but hey - they've lived off the fat of the land far too long and manu of them couldn't hack it in a live situation anyway.
As for Software developers we should be allowed to sell as much as we want as watching the live performance of a programmer would not be very entertaining !! ;)
In certain circumstances I see nothing wrong with the occasional download for personal use only.
However it must be said that Software developers & Performing artists and the agents that leech,sorry represent them have a massive advantage over say a builder, plumber or electrician etc when it comes to charging for their work.
Because their work can be recorded in either an analogue or digital format they can sell and resell and continue to resell the same bit of work over and over ad infinitum getting paid over and over again for the original, one off, bit of work they did.
Just playing the Devil's advocate here but perhaps an actor, musician or other performing artist should be paid per live performance only - recorded works should be freely available and would act as publicity for people to go and see them live - tough on the cinema-only actors but hey - they've lived off the fat of the land far too long and manu of them couldn't hack it in a live situation anyway.
As for Software developers we should be allowed to sell as much as we want as watching the live performance of a programmer would not be very entertaining !! ;)