I think its because a <i>lot</i> of people on HN run businesses themselves which could or are negatively affected by piracy, because software is easily pirated - so they (we?) are naturally hostile towards the idea that we're doing business wrong and that our hard work should be free.<p>Honestly, I don't know what I think of it. On the one hand the pro-piracy people <i>do</i> make some sense, but on the other hand, a world of <i>free everything</i> is impossible to sustain and messy to do business in. Unlike OSS people like to think, support is not enough to.. err.. support all businesses. It works in some cases, sure, but it doesn't scale very well and for some businesses simply doesn't make sense.