Piracy and intellectual property

I respect copyright. When I need an image to use in a PowerPoint presentation, I use Google's advanced image search to find images with a non-restrictive license. If someone is going to go to the effort to produce something awesome, they have a right to charge for use or not. This makes me appreciate movements in open-source and ad-based products because they let me use great products without paying. As a programmer, I use open-source software all the time. As a consumer, I often watch YouTube and read web comics and I am happy to disable my ad-blocker for these and other sites I visit frequently (as long as the ads are appropriate). It bothers me how people disrespect others' intellectual property. I hope that we, as a global society, can learn to respect the effort that others make to create great things.

Post inspired by: Think piracy is killing the music industry? This chart suggests otherwise.