We've been stealing software ever since companies began charging for it.
Not that there's anything right with that. Just because someone decides to demand $50 -- or $500 -- for something we want or need doesn't mean we can just take it.
Except ... that it kind of does. Making things easy to steal makes them more likely to be stolen.
The music industry learned that. The lengthy boom they enjoyed by digitizing their entire catalogs for CDs in the '80s only meant that people would swap those digital bits incessantly once technology (broadband Internet, writable CDs) allowed them to do so.
Computer software used to be what companies bundled in the box so they could sell their hardware.
Apple still pretty much works this way. The company's software -- OS X, iTunes -- is brilliant, but it's only there to get you to buy Macs, iPods and ... digital music.
See, in this case a brilliant software product, combined with equally brilliant hardware, has somehow made a market for legitimately sold digital music.
But we're still stealing.
Since the first computers came as a complete package -- hardware and software -- we were conditioned to pay for one and not the other. Most of us aren't about to march into Wal-Mart and carry out a large computer box without paying for it. That's shoplifting. And that means getting caught.
But installing Microsoft Office from our friend's disc is also stealing. It's easier. We're not likely to be arrested. MS Office is wicked expensive. We don't use it all that much ... but need it sometimes.
I did it, too. Everybody needs to generate Word-compatible documents, Excel-compatible spreadsheets, and now PowerPoint- compatible presentations. (PowerPoint is evil, but that's another column for another day.)
I used to maintain that huge software behemoths like Microsoft wouldn't be subject to so much...

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