Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cs.yale.edu!news
From: news@cs.yale.edu (Usenet News)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Software piracy
Message-ID: <25381@cs.yale.edu>
Date: 13 Jun 90 20:49:54 GMT
References: <3914@moondance.cs.uq.oz.au> <56447.2673B586@cmhgate.FIDONET.ORG> <9243@paperboy.OSF.ORG> <41882@apple.Apple.COM> <36990@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: jellinghaus-robert@yale.UUCP
Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept, New Haven CT  06520-2158
Lines: 107

In article <36990@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> thom@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Thom Gillespie) writes:
>	1) It seems like software piracy is here to stay, part of the culture

Insofar as the culture is based on the technology, and the technology allows
one to very easily duplicate large amounts of software very quickly, you're
right.  Software is almost unique in this regard; in what other field of
industry can a technical item, which cost many man-years to produce and has
a value in the thousands of dollars, be stolen with such impunity, without
even affecting the original buyer?

That's one of the reasons piracy is such a dubious crime; you can copy
someone's software without their even knowing it!  It isn't stealing from the
person from whose software the copy was made; it's stealing from the company
who invested their time and money in the product, in the hopes you would
repay them.

I used to pirate software by the truckload back on my Apple ][ in high school,
but now that I'm going to work for Autodesk, things seem a bit different....

>3) In the recent Whole Earth Quarterly David Bryne is asked about music
>piracy, what does he think of it? He says, "He views piracy as advertising"
>They steal his music -- and the distributor looses -- and they pay to come to
>his concerts because they listen to his advertising all day long ... good
>advertising for a good product.

What does this have to do with software piracy?  There are no "concerts" in
the software world; if David Byrne had to make his living off of recorded
music alone, and if EVERYONE who listened to his music had a dubbing DAT
player that could copy whole albums in seconds, I think he'd change his tune
pretty quickly.

Comparing audio piracy to software piracy is bogus, both because audio copies
degrade whereas software copies are perfect, and because EVERY computer user
has what's needed to copy ANY piece of software, in a very short time, as
opposed to audio listeners who only sometimes have the necessary equipment, 
and who need to wait 45 minutes to tape an album.

>4) In the Media lab Stuart Brand suggests that in the future we won't buy
>Microsoft Word so much as subscribe to it -- good service coming on a regular
>basis with a good update policy. Wasn't this what made Red Ryder a success?

Two more problems with this:  most companies now are trying to make their
products as easy to use as possible, and investing a LOT of time and money
in their attempts to do so.  According to this suggestion, they should be
trying to make them as DIFFICULT as possible, so _all_ users will have to
come to them for support.  That would be bad!  Second, I am unaware that
Red Ryder _was_ a great success.  The current version is no longer share-
ware, is it?  Isn't it no longer called Red Ryder?  I wonder why the change?

I don't think the service idea is viable.  The best hope I can see, beyond
measures such as hardware locks and CPU numbers, is the gradual evolution
of a nationwide distributed network, from which all software is accessible.
The network would charge you for the time spent running particular programs,
and credit the programs' authors.  This scheme resembles the automated 
royalty mechanisms Ted Nelson suggested for hypertext networks--after all,
why write for a living on such a network if there's no way to receive royal-
ties?  Interestingly, in this scheme, all packages would become shareware:
you could try any number of commercial software packages, for very little
cost, any length of time, and with access to all the latest updates as soon
as they become available; and when you find the one you like best, you simply
use that one.  I can think of no better way to make the best software earn
the most money.  Software evolution would speed up dramatically....

For an interesting discussion of the industry's contradictory attitudes
towards copy protection, check out the book _The Autodesk File_, by John
Walker, New Riders Publishing, ISBN 0-934035-63-6.  Among with other bits
and pieces relating to Autodesk's growth, it has a description of the
time Autodesk started shipping a hardware lock device with AutoCAD, and the
reaction thereto.

>The most interesting suggestion in the entire discussion was by A J
>Cunningham, "legalize piracy." Now there is any idea worth discussing instead
>of the old bromides which don't fit digital media. Can you do it? How? What
>type of changes will have to happen in our heads for this to work?

I don't buy it.  There is no conceptual difference between a piece of soft-
ware and any other item in a free market; people invest their time in things
so that other people will buy those things, and other people buy the things
because they think the things are worth the price.  Software simply happens
to be much easier to steal than any other commodity I'm aware of.

The one argument which I heard a lot in high school is, "Well, I don't have
the money, and I _can't_ buy the thing, so what difference does it make if
I steal it?"  Over and above the immediate absurdity of this (I can't afford
a Ferrari, but I don't go out and steal one), I see a question of priorities
here.  When, after all, _do_ you have the money?  The question is whether 
you feel you can spare it.  If you are inclined towards piracy, you may well
decide you need the money more for other things, and copy the software while
claiming, and to some extent believing, you don't have what it takes to buy
it.  If you felt guiltier about pirating it, you might well _find_ the money.
Academic discounts take care of the one major case where this doesn't hold;
college students _don't_ have hundreds of dollars to blow on software, but
if you need th peackage badly enough, you should be willing to pay for it.
After all, if it doesn't pay for itself, why are you buying it?

People who still claim "well, it just costs too much and I'm not going to
pay it, so there!" are just common thieves.  Just because you're paying $1000
for nothing but a disk and a manual in a box doesn't mean that disk and that
manual aren't genuinely worth $1000!

>	--Thom Gillespie


Rob Jellinghaus                | "Next time you see a lie being spread or a
jellinghaus-robert@CS.Yale.EDU |  bad decision being made out of sheer ignor-
ROBERTJ@{yalecs,yalevm}.BITNET |  ance, pause, and think of hypertext."
{everyone}!decvax!yale!robertj |     -- K. Eric Drexler, _Engines of Creation_