Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!ucbvax!van-bc!ubc-cs!alberta!herald.usask.ca!lowey From: lowey@herald.usask.ca (Kevin Lowey) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc Subject: Re: Why do people pirate software? Message-ID: <1990Aug18.205711.1931@herald.usask.ca> Date: 18 Aug 90 20:57:11 GMT References: <6207@milton.u.washington.edu> Organization: University of Saskatchewan Lines: 117 >>No. When you loan out a book, only the borrower can use it; hence, there >>is still only one copy around. However, if you were to make a copy of the >>book and then give your copy away, you'd indeed be in violation. You'd >>also be pretty dumb, because copying costs more than buying the original, >>in general. Copying software is free 'cept for the disk space. The analogy >>only holds if you loan out the software without keeping a copy yourself. > The value of a book is the contents of the book, not the book itself. > If a book is loaned to someone, and that person reads the book without > buying it, then he has received the full use of the book. In this case, > two people have had the full usage of the book - the original purchaser, and > the person to whom the book was loaned. The copyright holder only received > money for only one usage. I am not a lawyer, so I'm going to simply quote passages from the book "Computer Contracts" by Hilary E. Pearson, 1984, publishers Chapman and Hall: Page 207: The basic right given to the copyright owner is to prevent others from copying his work. This is, however, usually expressed as the positive exclusive right to reproduce the work, and to do related acts. Page 208: Because the rights are limited to the author's work, they do not prevent others from using the ideas contained in that work, nor can the author restrain use of an identical work which was independantly conceived. So your example falls apart. The copyright owner (the author or publisher of the book) prohibits people who buy that book from making COPIES of the book. However, that does not prohibit the person from using things learned from reading the book. Thus the book CAN be loaned, the original purchaser is just transfering his right to use the one copy to someone else. All the copyright does is prohibit a person from making a COPY of the book. > If the software policy were to be applied to books, then nobody should be > allowed to read a book without purchasing his own copy. This obviously is > not the case. Suppose every book came with a seal, and a page that said > that breaking the seal implied an agreement that the purchaser would not loan > the book to anyone else, unless he forgot everything he read in the book. > Then we would be analogous to the situation everyone is describing. That is a completely different issue. Now you are talking about software licences, not copyrights. Don't confuse the two. A copyright focuses only on the right to copy something. It is usually protected by criminal law, to the point that it was included in the constitution of the Unitied States. Page 203: The importance of protecting the works of authors was recognised by the framers of the Constitution of the United States of America, in the same article that provided for Patents. A software licence is a contract entered into by two parties which outline FURTHER restrictions IN ADDITION to the copyright. This contract is enforced by CIVIL law on a case by case basis. The contract could say you have to always wear mirror shades and hold a Nerf Bat when you use the software. It would be up to the courts to decide if that was valid or not. A more realistic example may be your telephone book. The book itself is protected by a copyright, meaning people cannot duplicate the book. However there is usually a "Conditions of Service" portion at the beginning which outline further limitations, such as the following from my SaskTel book: PAGE 20: 9. Each subscriber shall be allowed without charge the use of one telephone directory. 10. Every precaution is taken to prevent errors or ommissions in this directory, but SaskTel assumes no liability whatever for damages caused to subscribers by errors or omissions in the compiling and printing of this directory. etc. In other words, this BOOK has included a LICENCE which further limits the legal liabilities and use of the book over the existing copyright laws. Computer Software has its own unique problems, such as the ease with which it can be copied when compared to books, and situations like computer networks where one copy of the program can be used by many computers at the same time (although technically each computer has its own copy in RAM so copyright has been violated). This was originally compounded by confusion about exactly how Copyright law applied to Computer Software. To protect themselves, software licences (contracts) were added to software to outline how the software should be protected. > Another bone of contention is the one copy per CPU policy, which is analogous > to saying that if you buy a video tape, you can only watch it on one VCR, or > if you read a book at home, or on a bus, or at work, you need a separate copy > for each place. The latter is not the case, so why is the former the case? No, its the same as saying you can only watch the tape on one VCR AT ONE TIME. Most of the CPU policies I see say this is licenced for one cpu at a time. However, since this is covered by a software contract, and not copyright law, the copyright holders can say ANYTHING THEY WANT about how the software is used. It's up to the courts to decide if the contract is binding or not. If you don't like the conditions associated with buying some software, then don't buy it. >>When you tape stuff from radio or TV, you really should send in money >>to the owner; and if you sell taped copies, you better believe you are >>in violation of copyright! > > The Supreme Court has stated that taping of music and TV programs for one's > own usage is legal. No royalties are due to anybody, if you are a private > citizen, and not gaining a profit on the taped material. But that is a different matter too. TV stations pay performance rights to the copyright holders so they can show the TV program. The closest computer analogy is a site licence, where you pay up-front a fee for unlimited copies as long as those copies are only used in your institution (by your TV viewers in the case of TV stations) > Nobody is talking about selling taped copies of broadcast music or TV > programming here, nor are we talking about selling copies of computer > programs. No, but you ARE talking about illegally COPYING computer programs so that more than one person can use the program at the same time. This is a no-no. - Kevin Lowey (LOWEY@SASK.USASK.CA, LOWEY@HERALD.UUCP, LOWY@SASK.BITNET)