Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!bsu-cs!cfchiesa From: cfchiesa@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Christopher Chiesa) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Software thieves (was Re: Software theives) Summary: So what if piracy cuts into profits? Message-ID: <10043@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> Date: 20 Aug 89 18:20:45 GMT References: <30706@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <6846@rpi.edu> <58013@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Distribution: usa Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, IN, USA Lines: 139 In article <58013@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>, martens@calorie.cis.ohio-state.edu (Jeff Martens) writes: > In article <6865@rpi.edu> kudla@pawl.rpi.edu (Robert J. Kudla) writes: > > >>> I consider actually lifting product from the shelves to be a crime. > >>> I don't consider, say, an employee taking a piece of software home, > >>> copying it, bringing it back and re-shelving it with new labels and > >>> all to be a crime in the slightest.) > > >I don't care who copies what; as far as I'm concerned, unless > >something physical is stolen there is no problem- no one loses > >anything except the publisher, and that only theoretically. > > So I guess you'd say that if I were to photocopy a copyrighted book > and sell photocopies for less than the publishers price, I haven't > committed a crime. If you had the resources to do this, and put out a readable (e.g. legible) copy of whatever-it-was, I personally would buy from YOU rather than the PUBLISHER, because your price was better for an essentially equivalent product! I don't need to pay through the nose for fancy binding, cover art, etc. etc. etc. as long as the INFORMATION contained is complete. Now if you started taking liberties and editing stuff out, I'd get angry... To me, anyway, this sounds like Free Enterprise. If the laws against this sort of thing didn't exist, competition in the marketplace would lead to QUALITY products at LOW prices, since those that couldn't compete would just go out of business, period. That's the way basic economics were originally said to work... Supply and Demand, Survival of the Fittest, etc. >So what if I broke the law? Nothing physical was > stolen, so no crime was committed. This is an irrelevant point: the Law (capital letter intentional) is largely arbitrary, based on tradition and precedent. This can be taken far too much to an extreme: surely you've heard anguished "war stories" about people who can't get some organization to adopt a new, improved policy because "we've ALWAYS done it this way"? The Law works the same way, by and large -- hence the upheaval when new social issues arise to be "dealt with" -- "Oh my God, we have NO PRECEDENT to fall back on, we actually have to THINK about what we're doing...!" Phooey. > > I guess I don't see how you can justify stealing software, especially > if you've worked professionally as a developer. The salaries of the > designers, programmers, marketers, etc. have to be paid somehow. If a > large segment of the potential market is getting the product for free, > then the business becomes less profitable. Yes, but SO WHAT? So many arguments "against piracy" make a big point of the fact that "piracy cuts into profits," potential or otherwise. I say, SO WHAT? The purpose of the Law is NOT supposed to be "protect corporate profits," it is no more and no less than to allow people to live their individual and col- lective lives as best they can, with a "fair chance" for everyone: developers and pirates alike! If the developers can produce software (or books or films or videos or records or CDs or...) more cheaply than the pirates can pirate them, the developers gain ground; likewise, if the reverse, the pirates gain ground. All in all, a hundred years from now who'll care? (Okay, okay, a hundred years from now, today's legal decisions will be hidebound tradition themselves, but I've already taken as a "given" that today's laws are ridicu- lous, else I wouldn't be writing this.) >What does this mean to Joe > User? Well, the developer's resources are cut back, so expect fewer > new products, fewer upgrades, less customer support, etc., FROM *THAT PARTICULAR DEVELOPER*. Too bad, that one "lost the round" as described under "fair chance for everybody" and "Free Market," above! So the game (that's what it all is, anyway) goes on; that developer goes out of business, his employees disperse and work for someone else... In the long run, development will continue (although NOT forever on ANY particular machine), and so will piracy, and that's that. I'd like the police to step in when the stakes get high enough that pirates and developers start SHOOTING at each other, but until then I feel they ought to leave things alone and let the whole issue sort ITSELF out. (That's what it'll eventually do ANYWAY, in the long run.) (This reminds me of someone's suggestion recently to "put all the drug pushers and users in one place, give 'em all the guns they want, and let 'em kill each other off." Makes sense to me!) > because immoral dweebs feel justified in stealing copyrighted software "Immoral" is relative. If something is against YOUR morals, DON'T DO IT. But don't impose YOUR morals on someone else whose morals are DIFFERENT. (And yes, if someone's morals allow him to break into my house, that's covered too -- because MY morals allow me to fight him off with whatever means are available, including killing him in cold blood.) > (or books, or films, or recordings, whatever) and justify their theft > by saying, "Duh, uh, but nothing physical was stolen." You'll note that not once have I said "nothing physical was stolen." That doesn't enter the picture at all, either way. > Maybe the cretin who regularly walks off with free software wouldn't > buy 180-odd software packages per year. But, maybe he should have to > pay for the ones he actually uses, just to keep the companies > producing useful software afloat and active. Heh. Read Steven Levy's HACKERS. I think the world would have been better off if the Hacker Ethic had become the standard: everything done by every programmer enters the (now-called) public domain, and everyone who wants to use it has the right to do so. They used to keep their executables (on paper tape) in an UNLOCKED drawer where anyone could share them. Nice eh! > I have no real problem with someone borrowing software for a test > drive -- I've been burned by bad software purchases myself -- but I > feel that someone who does this has a moral responsibility to buy the > package if he's gonna keep it. Otherwise, he's just a parasite. Agreed, in the sense that if this user claims to participate in the same civilization and society as the "general public," our society's current stand- ards (well, the ones we'll spout if asked directly; not necessarily the way we actually ACT) of ethics say that the user SHOULD recompense the creator of the work. But, again, this is all relative, and it is NOT the Law's responsi- bility to enforce it in cases where the user and creator have not agreed beforehand that X amount of money will be exchanged for product P (as in over-the-counter sales: obtaining a product in ANY fashion (including break- ing into Computer Shed at midnight and TAKING it) from a registered/designated Place Of Business would thus constitute an implicit agreement that money is to be traded for goods, making the breaking-and-entering type of obtainment a "breach of contract." I'm sure some of this makes sense to SOME people, and NOT to others, and that the same parts don't make sense to the same people. But, like I said, in a hundred years who'll care? :-) > -=- > -- Jeff (martens@cis.ohio-state.edu) > > Jim & Tammy: living proof that you can fool some of the people all of > the time. ^^^^^^^^^^^ ^ Speaking of "ethics..." :-) -- UUCP: !{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!cfchiesa cfchiesa@bsu-cs.UUCP