First, this column doesn't defend stealing but tries to explain why unauthorised copying and distribution is understandable and why moral huff and puff, though gratifying, may be irrelevant.
My example is QuickTime, a popular Apple utility for playing music and videos. A limited free version comes with the iPhone. But if you want the function that you really need for the phone - the ability to convert DVDs and transfer them - you have to buy the bundle from Apple.
Alternatives exist. You can trudge the internet for free software that claims to transport videos to the phone. ("If thou find'st one, let me know/Such a Pilgrimage were sweet;" as John Donne wrote of true women.)
But one does find a Suzie. Suzie bought the fully functional QuickTime. In the spirit of giving that characterised the pioneer days of the global village, she then loaded a film on YouTube where she hands out her password and codes to make QuickTime run freely and fully.
Her exercise of individual choice infringes copyright and breaches her contract with Apple. Suzie has deprived Apple of income and should be transported to Australia.
On the other hand, you don't have to have lived under apartheid to know that what is legal is also ethical and what is illegal is necessarily unethical.
Rigid commercial practices open the manufacturer's pocket to the picker. Some don't want to play music with QuickTime. They may need only an element of the program and then only once.
They want to buy a banana for now. To an extent free try-and-buy software allows buyers to discover whether the software will do the job - it reduces the gamble in buying software. It doesn't help the buyer who wants one banana in the bunch now and not a month's supply.
For good and bad reasons, software manufacturers sell and only sell packages. In not offering rental software, they are pushing marriage on people who prefer dating.
Such restriction on choice fuels prejudice against businesses and encourages the Suzies.
More to the point: apart from the sense of morality that she is expected to have by those with it, has Suzie any good reason to not pirate?
She and others are daily exposed to announcements about manufacturers' profits and, goggle-eyed, they get little or no information about the intended purpose of all this or analysis of whether the megabucks meet the purpose.
It's moot whether Suzie should be told about relations between profit on the one hand and on the other prices, shareholder return, reward for innovation and sound management, or operating the development costs.
But in the absence of the above, the corporate crowing is as much an invitation to theft as the hen's to the fox.
Take Google, which announced a plan to digitise the world's writing, extending the world's intellectual capital to all.
We were right behind Google on this, just as we are behind Apple's innovations. It leaked out that Google didn't intend to pay royalties to writers. (Do Apple or Microsoft creators get royalties?) The Google execs would have wallets fattened and talked of teamwork.
It took a court case to persuade Google otherwise.
If pirates could believe they were dealing with organisations where the rewards of the innovators were congruent with those of the executive suite, piracy might diminish.
Increasingly in the West at least, people buy products on the basis of information about their source and how the money is distributed.
They are willing to pay more for coffee knowing what percentage of the price goes to the West African farmers.
Likewise, the purchase of software for many depends on knowing more than the advertising or functionality.