Who is "you people"? People who pirate, or people in tech? What makes you think they're one and the same?
You'll also hear a lot of libertarian and/or fluffy pseudo-socialist arguments for abolishing IP law when this stuff comes up. Information wants to be free, man!
But when it pertains to a programmer, a developer, an academic, etc., I do often see a very different attitude on display. You can see it in this thread. One of the top replies right now is about how the OP probably has an actionable DMCA claim. I thought the DMCA was Satan...? I guess that's only if certain kinds of people use it.
I think it boils down to a kind of classism or cultural/vocational tribalism. Programmers and academics are members of our class/tribe, and their works are worthy of protection and compensation. But writers, actors, producers, musicians, etc. are not and they can go busk on street corners. I don't think most people realize they're doing this, but they are. They've just never stopped to reflect on it or to unpack this nonsense.
There are exceptions, but dig up any thread around here on Popcorn Time or The Pirate Bay and you will see what I mean. Variants of "IP law should not exist" or "fuck the artists" is 9:1 the dominant opinion, with people putting forward a different view often getting down voted to the lightest shades of grey.
I say this as someone who used to believe this stuff until I reflected on it and thought about the implications and learned a bit more about how the world actually works. Abolishing copyright will only benefit the big content aggregators and vertically integrated delivery/streaming services, who will now be able to monetize everything in any way they want without paying anyone for it. Artists will starve. Most will leave the profession. Music usually comes up in these threads but musicians won't be the most fucked -- at least musicians can tour. The most fucked profession will be writing. When was the last time you attended a paid recital of a novel by its author?
Everyone agrees that selling pirated content is wrong. Hell, most pirates would agree to that. You can say it's a shitty attitude to have, but it's a consistent one: "Piracy is OK as long as you don't resell what you pirate" is internally consistent, even if you think it's morally wrong.
Similarly, people seem to be consistently against plagiarism, which is apparently at issue here as well. Again, the stance "Piracy is OK but don't pass pirated works off as your own" is internally consistent, even if you think it's morally wrong.
I'm all for technology moving fast, even breaking things. I just want those agents of disruption to spend as much time cleaning up the mess they create in the process.
People pirating entertainment isn't exactly "the free market" in action, but it's close. The common denominator is people doing what they want to, when no one intervenes in their activities.
So if there's nothing to deter people from pirating movies, or to punish them for it, then they'll go ahead and pirate movies. The risk is really small, and the reward is (practically) instant gratification. Very few would pass that up.
On the one hand, I think IP laws shouldn't exist. They're not meant to benefit the creators anyway, but the entertainment industry BigCorps instead.
On the other hand, I think it's wrong, to a small extent, to pirate movies or music or anything else someone has created and put up for sale.
There's a deal available to you, and it's up to you whether you'll take it. You get something, the creator gets money, and both are more or less happy. But if you circumvent the deal by downloading the product instead, that's comparable to stealing without the creator actually losing the product.
Of course, the entertainment industry equates pirating with actual stealing, because it's more impactful that way. That's dishonest too.
But all in all, people will act according to incentives, and they will pursue their personal gain and the satisfaction of their wants and needs. Nothing's going to change that, so it's pointless to even try.
Ultimately IP laws do way more harm than good, and they're not meant to benefit us little guys anyway.
Think of all the patent lawsuits flying around in the US, or that piece of shit Martin Shkreli charging outrageous prices for drugs people need to survive, etc.
All of that follows from IP laws existing too. So it's not just about "creators" getting what they deserve, it's all the scummy other stuff too.
Besides, what anyone deserves for his creation, is whatever he can get people to voluntarily pay for it. Nothing more, nothing less. That's something to keep in mind too. If there's no market for someone's creation, that doesn't mean there should be legislation that makes people pay for it.
Alright, I guess that's enough rambling now.
The point of my post was a business profiting from pirates. The people who make the choice to forego bittorrent and just post the pirated stuff for a profit. THAT... is my point.
Yeah, that's a scuzzy thing to do.
Piracy by most people is a failure of the market to provide. Look at the most pirated content: movies, music, television. All of these have a common vein; traditionally these media are distributed in specific and timed ways, usually at different times around the world, at different prices and at different venues, and all of it for no real reason.
Why should a hardcore fan of Metallica have to wait another three weeks for their new CD just because he lives in a different country?
Why should someone who loves Peter Jackson's movies have to sit and watch his friends in the United States see the movie he can't for another four weeks because he doesn't live in the right spot?
It's all ancient, trivial nonsense and was treated as such. I heard this so many times from me and other people like me: I would totally pay for this, but I have no way of doing so. Such rigid controls on availability of easily pirated content breed piracy and make criminals out of people who otherwise would never have been.
And neither it does to the ones who sell stuff.
I'm sorry that future comes in pieces and not exactly in order. That the means to make culture free came before the means to make creators not have to pay for the rent. That the draw people have to educate themselves, or to participate in the shared cultural experience is stronger than the arbitrary restrictions some people try to place.
Now I do the same thing with Amazon, and my credit card gets billed a buck. The difference is negligible to me, the difference to the media company? Tons of bad PR and losing a shitload of potential sales because they still thought the album was the only way to distribute music.
Edit: Upon further thought, the "world" in question here gave me two options: Either buying the CD, or downloading the song, and at the time there was no middle ground there. I can still download songs but I don't do it, I buy them. If that is a sense of entitlement it's not a very good one.
I'm much more inclined to support something closer to original copyright. As to Trademark protections, some have gone too far (IOC for example). And patent protection on anything software driven is pretty stupid, as well as extension patents on medication, but I can see a place for patent law, in some places.