Kevin Kelly, Founding Executive Editor, Wired

Why People Pirate Stuff

August 21, 2008 at 12:02 am PT

In the universe of the free (“free” as in beer), getting ripped off is the norm. Yes, many products and services are deliberately priced at zero these days, but a significant portion of consumers will gravitate to illegitimate free versions of not-free stuff. Free versions of pricey digital products are not hard to find on underground file trading sites, or in bits and pieces on above ground aggregators like YouTube. Most high-priced wares like expensive commercial software can be had for literally nothing. But very cheap things are widely pirated for free as well.

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Tagged with: copyright, file sharing, Kevin Kelly, P2P, piracy, Wired

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