Morality and downloading

[Ravenshire]

(emphasis is mine)

As long as people are willing to pony up at the box office I would argue that it's not. There will always be people who want to see it before everybody else.

You're right for the most part. But there are also a massive amount of people pirating new movies. My thought is that this is the market responding to the price of content.

Meh. I don't think it is. I think most people who download movies that are still in the theater are downloading the ones they would have wouldn't pay to see anyway.

More to Benny's point...
While I won't defend online piracy as moral, there is evidence that the "victims" are not being hurt and certainly not to the extent that they claim. Internet piracy does not reflect a one-to-one ratio in downloaded content to lost sale. There are many who download music using torrent because it's more convenient than sitting in front of a PC ripping a stack of discs or to replace CDs that were stolen out of their cars, auto insurance won't cover that loss and the labels have no fucks to give even though the consumer is still legally entitled to that music. There are those that will download expensive software to be able to try an actual working version (not the trial version where half the shit you need in your day to day use of the software is disabled) before dropping thousands of dollars for each copy they need. Many will download a sampling of songs from a band they heard on the radio to see if they're really worth a shit or if it's just that one song that's good.

No, stealing is not ok but what has become known as "internet piracy" (downloading content through non-standard channels) does not automatically equate to theft.