How do you justify piracy?

@razor123 (979)
India
August 25, 2008 7:29am CST
I'm making the assumption that most of you download a lot of things that you don't own. I sure do, hope it's not a big surprise to anyone... Without anybody taking a "holier than thou" attitude, how do you justify downloading your stuff? How much of it, did you actually buy? Do you feel that not purchasing software/music is the only way to institute change in a broken industry, if so does that make it just? What about non-RIAA labels who give their artists a fair cut of the profits? Even if artists only make 10% of their CD sales, don't the record labels and the others involved in the creation of the CD deserve some cut of that? Do you feel that supporting artists in other ways (live shows, merchandise) balances out the potential profit they loose when you download their CDs/software? This is really a weighted question with no simple answer, but one that every user of the site has probably considered at some time or another. I guess this is more geared towards music/software as other forms of piracy are completely different due to the respective industries behind them, but it's still important in this situation. So share your thoughts.
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