Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!yale!eagle!jtreworgy From: jtreworgy@eagle.wesleyan.edu Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Software thieves Message-ID: <620@eagle.wesleyan.edu> Date: 24 Aug 89 14:30:15 GMT References: <30706@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <6846@rpi.edu> <2361@raspail.cdcnet.cdc.com> <6865@rpi.edu> <58013@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <6876@rpi.edu> <1160@sas.UUCP> <11682@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <1575@convex.UUCP> Distribution: usa Lines: 79 In article <1575@convex.UUCP>, swarren@eugene.uucp (Steve Warren) writes: > In article <11682@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> scheer@cit-vax.UUCP (Wonko the Sane) writes: >>Of COURSE you can't convince anyone of the correctness of the respective >>viewpoints. This is essentially a religious discussion. On the one hand, >>the pirates are arguing that information should be inexpensive if not free, > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >>whereas the non-pirates believe in following the laws that society has set > [...] > This is a rather convenient opinion to hold, don't you think? Many > "consumers" would prefer that "producers" would become their chattel > and endlessly entertain and otherwise cater to them at no expense to > themselves. This is the category that pirates fall into. Cut through > all the baloney and the pathetic rationalizations. > > What is the essence of a pirate? He loots. Looters are "users" in the > perjerative sense. Without the "producers" in society "pirates" are lost. > What does a looter do when there is no one left to loot? He simply lives > without. Why? Because he is incapable of producing these items himself, > and unwilling to pay someone else to produce it for him. > > There _is_ an ultimate right or wrong on this question, because we know > what the result would be if all consumers were pirates. Nothing would > ever be produced. Why should I produce something if I know it will be > instantly stolen from me? Don't rationalize that _someone_ would pay for > it; I am taking pirating to its logical conclusion, at which point everyone > in the society realises that they don't need to buy software because they > can get it free and no one will harm them for it. First, if all consumers were pirates, the producer would not sell nothing... he would sell ONE copy. How is anyone going to get a copy without someone buying it in the first place? Economics would also dictate that based on supply and demand, the price of this one copy would be very high. What you are arguing is really foolish. You can't argue that piracy is completely wrong based on what would happen if everyone were a pirate. Everyone is NOT a pirate. This is a real world. I'm not arguing that piracy is right. It is definitely immoral and illegal activity. What I am arguing is that the software industry is not harmed to a great degree by piracy, and the consumers are HELPED by piracy. OK, you can give me all these statistics of some game "Groks in Space" that there were 5000 copies sold and an estimated 10000 more out there held by pirates. It is lunacy to think that if it were impossible to copy the game, 15000 copies would have been sold. Most people pirate games because they can't afford them. I would guess that about 75% or more of all pirates are people who do NOT have an income (i.e. high-school and college students). Don't say "well they could afford the computer, so they can afford the software"... they were probably given the computer as a gift from their parents. If they couldn't copy it, they wouldn't have it. And piracy benefits the legitimate consumer because he can see the program before he buys it, and he can have an un copy-protected copy so he's not up the creek when the disk fails. And then there's this whining about Dragon's Lair... they sold some huge # of copies, and then three months later, when the copy protection was cracked, sales dropped off. Did it ever occur to them that the potential market for Amiga games is quite small. There are only 1 million machines out there. The Amiga is expensive. People who spend a lot of money on a computer generally have interests other than games. So maybe at the most there are 500,000 (very liberal estimate!) people who buy games more than once every six months. Dragon's Lair is a VERY expensive game. Knock off another chunk of those people. Does anybody agree that after three months it seems likely that anyone who really wanted Dragon's Lair, and could actually afford it, would have bought it??? > > Just say NO to piracy. It is fundamentally immoral, and arguments to the > contrary are the self-serving rationalizations of looters. > Oh, please! Why is it immoral to posess information without paying when the other option is to not posess it? > --Steve > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > {uunet,sun}!convex!swarren; swarren@convex.COM Afternote: I think that, based on the amount of discussion here, maybe we should make a call for comp.piracy (or maybe comp.piracy.flame)! Anyone agree? -- James A. Treworgy jtreworgy@eagle.wesleyan.edu jtreworgy%eagle@WESLEYAN.BITNET