Back in 2006, Microsoft founder Bill Gates confessed that he watched pirated movies on the Internet. The Wall Street Journal said that the YouTube videos that he watched were "stolen" content. Bill Gates replied to them by saying that stolen is strong word, and that the "stolen" content that was uploaded on YouTube back then were more like copyrighted content that the owner wasn't being paid for, meaning he took that as a yes.
The Internet's biggest social failure was that it has served as enabling technology for rampant cheating and theft, and the rationalization of it. And we the Internet users should have known better before uploading anything that would infringe on copyright and goes against the requirements of fair use or fair dealing. Yet we chose to do the opposite of what is right, under the belief that sharing is caring. We always think that piracy is nothing like theft, under the belief that theft removes the original, while piracy creates a copy. However, we should have known that piracy takes away income from the copyright owners. In the end, piracy is still theft, but of a different kind, and yet we chose to support those who distribute knock-off products online. This means we are all guilty of standing with those who committed such computer crimes.
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