Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!mcsun!ukc!tcdcs!swift.cs.tcd.ie!vax1.tcd.ie!cpmurphy From: cpmurphy@vax1.tcd.ie Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: "Demos" and piracy Message-ID: <6517.269d10e5@vax1.tcd.ie> Date: 13 Jul 90 00:08:04 GMT References: <2741@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> Organization: Computer Laboratory, Trinity College Dublin Lines: 104 In article , mofo@bucsf.bu.edu (jason greene) writes: > Thank you for taking a broader view of my subject, Nigel. > > But to clarify things, here's my convention: > > o That support of any demo made specifically for use by a pirate on > pirated software is akin to supporting piracy. I still don't get it. How is anyone "supporting" piracy by watching a freely distributable demo? They're not psychic, you know. There's no way they know whether you look at it or not. > I don't believe that removing the "red sector demo" or any other demo that I've seen (most of) the red sector demo, and I have seen nothing to say that it was written by pirates to promote piracy. Not that I would read the text that flies by, anyway. You see, it's not actually the text that matters, it's the sound, the graphics. > is obviously supporting a pirate or a group is censorship. No? Can I just get my dictionary? "censor: to suppress what is obscene or sedititious or unacceptable to military or other authorities." >Consider the > case of John DeLorean. He built a neato, stainless-steel car (that some use > to travel through time, but I digress). Johnny got caught for using and > dealing cocaine. > > The car was discontinued because note only of it's relationship to the > coke-fiend, but because the design may never have been his, that production > deals may have been concudcted illegally, etc. Totally irrelevant. > Just the same, if there were a programming god like Dillon (no offense > Matt) who was all of a sudden found out to HAVE BEEN a pirate, I would > really begin to question WHERE he got his algorithms, WHERE he got his > graphics routines, WHERE he even got his idea(s). So you say they stole all the graphics routines from commercial software. Or, sorry, you SUSPECT they MIGHT have. Your concept of justice is a little bit primitive. You say the red sector demo and others "obviously" support piracy. You present not a shred of evidence. > And if the programmer were STILL a pirate, then he/she is performing an > illegal operation and deserves to be punsihed in every way. "An illegal operation". What the hell do you mean by this? It sounds like an evil surgeon. This kind of fuzzy accusation does not help you at all. "Punished in every way". Do you _read_ what you say? I presume you don't mean "should be tortured and then hung, drawn and quartered". If not then say what you mean to say. > If the > president of the NRA committed manslaughter, ten years later, would be be > allowed to carry a gun? Hell no! How do you know? What has this hypothetical situation got to do with European demos anyway? > That certainly is not censorship. No, not being allowed to own a gun is not censorship. > Also, who else remembers when not more than a month ago there was a posting > saying "Call these boards! All pirate except..." ? So what?? > I remember quite a large barrage of messages condemming the guy who wrote > the post. His post was no different than the demos, except that the post > didn't do a graphic song-and dance that we amiga folk love to show our > friends. So you say the MAIN purpose these people write demos is to get people to send them pirated software? I could think of a lot easier ways of getting pirated software. They do it to _show_off_ (their skills and, especially, the machine). I don't think people should be advertising piracy, but I'm not going to try to start a big witchhunt on Usenet about it. And I'm not going to delete a good demo just because some of the scroll-text-which-zooms-by-too-quickly-to-read is mildly offensive to me. > Don't get me wrong; a lot of the demos are quite incredible feats of > graphic and sound programming, and deserve to be praised. > > However, I don't see the original Boing demo spitting out pirate's names, > either. > > Jason > > ps: I can live without di**head pirates' demos easily. If I want to impress > someone, I can just boot up the Juggler. Good. And maybe (just maybe) the rest of us are mature enough to decide what is safe for us to watch and what is not, without somebody censoring everything because it might support pirates. And guess what, we haven't all got (or even seen) the Juggler demo. -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Christian Murphy, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland cpmurphy@vax1.tcd.ie cpmurphy%vax1.tcd.ie@cunyvm.cuny.edu ...uunet!mcsun!ukc!swift.cs.tcd.ie!vax1.tcd.ie!cpmurphy