Nick Bradbury recently posted an entry entitled On Piracy which read

Many people who use pirated products justify it by claiming they're only stealing from rich mega-corporations that screw their customers, but this conveniently overlooks the fact that the people who are hurt the most by piracy are people like me.

Shareware developers are losing enormous amounts of money to piracy, and we're mostly helpless to do anything about it. We can't afford to sue everyone who steals from us, let alone track down people in countries such as Russia who host web sites offering pirated versions of our work...Some would argue that we should just accept piracy as part of the job, but chances are the people who say this aren't aware of how widespread piracy really is. A quick look at my web server logs would be enough to startle most people, since the top referrers are invariably warez sites that link to my site (yes, not only do they steal my software, but they also suck my bandwidth).

A couple of years ago I wanted to get an idea of how many people were using pirated versions of TopStyle, so I signed up for an anonymous email account (using a "kewl" nickname, of course) and started hanging out in cracker forums. After proving my cracker creds, I created a supposedly cracked version of TopStyle and arranged to have it listed on a popular warez site....This cracked version pinged home the first time it was run, providing a way for me to find out how many people were using it. To my dismay, in just a few weeks more people had used this cracked version than had ever purchased it. I knew piracy was rampant, but I didn't realize how widespread it was until this test.

The proliferation of software piracy isn't anything new. The primary reason I'm bothering to post about it is that Aaron Swartz posted an obnoxious response to Nick's post entitled On Piracy, or, Nick Bradbury is an Amazing Idiot which besides containing a "parody" which is part Slippery Slope and part False Analogy ends with the following gems

Nick has no innate right to have people pay for his software, just as I have no right to ask people to pay for use of my name.

Even if he did, most people who pirate his software probably would never use it anyway, so they aren't costing him any money and they're providing him with free advertising.

And of course it makes sense that lots of people who see some interesting new program available for free from a site they're already at will download it and try it out once, just as more people will read an article I wrote in the New York Times than on my weblog.

...

Yes, piracy probably does take some sales away from Nick, but I doubt it's very many. If Nick wants to sell more software, maybe he should start by not screaming at his potential customers. What's next? Yelling at people who use his software on friends computers? Or at the library?

Aaron's arguments are so silly they boggle the mind but let's take them one at a time. Human beings have no innate rights. Concepts such as "unalienable rights" and documents such as the Bill of Rights have been agreed upon by some societies as the law but this doesn't mean they are universal or would mean anything if not backed up by the law and its enforcers. Using Aaron's argument, Aaron has no innate right to live in a house he paid for, eat food he bought or use his computer if some physically superior person or armed thug decides he covets his possessions. The primary thing preventing this from being the normal state of affairs is the law, the same law that states that software piracy is illegal. Western society has decided that Capitalism is the way to go (i.e. a party provides goods or services for sale and consumers of said goods and services pay for them). So for whatever definition of "rights" Aaron is using Nick has a right to not have his software pirated.  

Secondly, Aaron claims that if people illegally utilizing your software can't afford it then it's OK for them to do so. This argument is basically, "It's OK to steal if what you want is beyond your purchasing power". Truly, why work hard and save for what you want when you can just steal it. Note that this handy rule of Aaron's also applies to all sorts of real life situations. Why not shoplift, after all big department store chains can afford it anyway and in fact they factor that into their prices? Why not steal cars or rob jewellery stores if you can't afford them after all, it's all insured anyway right? The instant gratification generation truly is running amok.  

The best part of Aaron's post is that even though Nick states that there are more people using pirated versions of his software than those that paid for it Aaron dismisses this by saying that his personal opinion is that there wouldn't have been many lost sales by piracy then it devolves into some slippery slope argument about whether people should pay for using Nick's software on a friend's computer or at the library. Of course, the simple answer to this question is that by purchasing the software the friend or the library can let anyone use it, the same way that I can carry anyone in my car after purchasing it.  

My personal opinion is that if you think software is too expensive then (a) use cheaper alternatives (b) write your own or (c) do without it after all no one needs software. Don't steal it then try and justify your position with inane arguments that sound like the childish "information wants to be free" rants that used to litter Slashdot during the dotbomb era.