Funny how you can watch a wide swath of human behavior over the course of a week. Last week, a group of independent game developers got together to offer a limited time offer... five developers, five games, one week, pay as little as you want for the games, and donate as much of what you pay as you want to one of a pair of charities. They called it the Humble Bundle, and, as of this writing, with about 15 hours left on the offer, they've gotten over $840,000. All things considered, not too shabby.
Of course, it's not all a feel-good story. Having to pay for the bandwith to let all those downloads happen, they get tracking reports of how much bandwidth they've used... and, despite offering the option to pay as little as $0.01 for the games, it appears that about 25% of the downloads were made without any payment or contribution whatsoever (link). There are a number of people out there who, for whatever reason, couldn't or wouldn't pay anything for the games, even to charity.
So, there's your portrait... faith in humanity on the part of the developers, mostly decent people willing to play by the rules, and a pool of scum that can't be bothered to dig a penny out of their pocket for a little entertainment.
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