Hum. Well, I don't know if there's anything I can say about breaking the law not being immoral. It seems fairly clear-cut to me.
As for your--and many others--lack of guilt, I can offer several explanations.
Perhaps, deep down, you just don't feel that it's illegal. You don't think the issue has been decided. Perhaps you see that a good number of people disagree with the law, and think that a government run by the people should listen to what its people want, rather than coming up with random, unpopular laws.
As for your parents, if they're like mine, then it really does come down to the 'faceless crime' idea. My mother pirates like Blackbeard and doesn't care--no matter how often I explain that it's wrong. I think, perhaps, we aren't as moral as we think. If everybody does it, then we think it must be okay--especially if it is a hidden, quiet thing.
Of course, as soon as the RIAA started suing people, my mother made certain that none of our family used programs that could get us implicated. That doesn't stop her from having her friends burn CD's for her.
We, as Americans, are kind of an arrogant people. It defines, in part, who we are. We don't like people telling us what to do. So, we take what we want--as long as nobody is looking--and pretend that there are no consequences. This goes for pirating software too.
I can't really say why we feel this way. I feel it too--I have convinced myself not to pirate any more, but there was a time when I had no problem with it. Yet, I considered myself a very moral person. How did I rationalize this? It still confuses me.
No offense intended, Fuzzy. This is directed at us as a culture, not at you specifically.
