Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!riley
From: riley@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Daniel S. Riley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Software thieves (was Re: Software theives)
Message-ID: <8657@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: 21 Aug 89 03:05:18 GMT
References: <30706@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <6846@rpi.edu> <58013@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <10043@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>
Reply-To: riley@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Daniel S. Riley)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 44

I really, really, *really* should have put this thread in my kill file...

In article <10043@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> cfchiesa@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Christopher Chiesa) writes:
>In article <58013@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>, martens@calorie.cis.ohio-state.edu (Jeff Martens) writes:
>> 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.  

No.  Wrong.  Consider:  I write a book, program, whatever, and publish it.
Some other company copies it, and sells it for less.  They don't have to pay
the cost of writing/developing the whatever-it-is in the first place, so
they can sell it for less.  Nobody buys it from my publisher, I don't get
paid, so where's my incentive?  Free Enterprise only works if there is an
incentive to produce, and there's no incentive to produce if there are no 
intellectual property rights.

With computer software and hardware, you can argue that after-sales support
and such can entice people into buying from me even at the higher price,
but that argument certainly will not work for books.

Go read the Constitution.  It clearly states that copyrights and patents were
created to encourage the dissemination of information.  Not to protect the
rights of the creator or publisher or to restrict the promulgation of
inventions, works and ideas--just the opposite.  This is still as valid a
concept as it was then.  It is certainly true that copyright and patent law
have not adapted to the particular problems of computer software and hardware
protection, but you shouldn't be so hasty to discard the underlying
principles without understanding the issues involved.

-Dan Riley (riley@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu, cornell!batcomputer!riley)
-Wilson Lab, Cornell U.