A guy that I know (we will name him Mike) went to a video games store and bought a video game that cost 600 KR (943 USD), after buying it he opened the box, took the CD-Key, closed the box and returned it later to the shop and said the game didn’t work on his computer and got his money back.

By doing this he got the CD-Key which is what you need for playing the game plus enjoying some features like multilayer online gaming mode for free.

So my friend got really excited about that and thought of doing the same thing, so I warned him that this is stealing and that you can’t do so because you are getting something that you should be paying for.

The discussion continued among us for at least 2 hours and his excuse was that everybody does that, don’t you download music, TV-shows, movies? don’t you have windows, Photoshop, anti-virus or a video converter installed on your computer using a crack or a key gen? The only difference between file sharing and doing what the other guy did is that there is no physical contact between the demander and the supplier.

The qestion is:

Do you see any difference between file sharing and what Mike did?

If you don’t think that file sharing and what mike did is the same, explain to us why do you think so, what is the difference?