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"She just casually mentioned that her sister bought the CD and 'made a copy' for her."

" this same person attempted to let her stepdad 'borrow' her Windows XP install CD"

What you're talking about here is what I consider, and many, many, many people consider, to be "fair use".

If I buy something, I should be able to share that something with a friend or family member. Just imagine if you bought a book, read it, then loaned it to your brother or someone else. You have a moral right to do so. Also, I should be able to loan my skill saw to my neighbor. There are many such examples.

The copyright on Windows and some CDs forbids such "fair use", and it is, quite frankly, immoral to forbid such fair use.

Now what is fair for content producers to forbid is unauthorized redistribution for profit. That's what does actual damage to someone's business-depending, revenue-producing intellectual property.

Piracy, or casual sharing among family and friends, does not do damage to a content producer's business or livlihood. Nor does file sharing on the internet, as most studies/surveys have shown that the biggest file dowloaders/sharers also tend to be the biggest purchasers, and they even increase their purchasing of content after downloading heavily.

DRM being used by large companies is only their stategy to gain a leg up on their competion and extract more cash from consumers. DRM provides no benefits and only causes hassles and/or limitations on consumers. DRM is a disaster.

There's a fundamental difference between digital content and "real world stuff". Digital content can be copied with next to zero cost, a book or skill saw can't.

Now, let's for a minute imagine that it was possible to copy a skill saw. Would you consider giving a copy to your neighbor to be "fair use"?

I'm not supporting DRM. I just wanted to point out that digital content is a very special form of merchandise. "Information Rules" by Chapiro and Varian is an interesting read; http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/087584863X

If I buy something, I should be able to share that something with a friend or family member

Sure, but normally when you share something with a friend if affects your ability to use it. For example, if I lend a friend my car I can use it while they've got it. When you make a copy of a cd you're producing another instance of the original and giving it away.

If you want to lend a friend a cd then give them the original and wait for them to give it back to you!

If I buy something, I should be able to share that something with a friend or family member. Just imagine if you bought a book, read it, then loaned it to your brother or someone else. You have a moral right to do so. Also, I should be able to loan my skill saw to my neighbor. There are many such examples.[i]

The difference between Windows, a book, and a skill saw, is that when you 'loan' Windows to somebody, you're not really loaning it to them .. you're [i]giving it to them. Unlike a book or a skill saw, you can do that without losing the original. To make your analogy fit, you would have to make a Star Trek-style copy of the physical devices and loan out the copy while keeping the original to yourself.

Also, in regards to piracy, so you make a copy of a software program you bought and 'loan' it to your friend. Ok, fine. But what is the difference between that and somebody who uplaods a torrent on the Internet and 10,000 people download it? In other words, how many copies can you 'loan' out before it comes wrong? 1? 5? 1 million? Where do you draw the line?