Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!usc!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!klaatu.rutgers.edu!josh
From: josh@klaatu.rutgers.edu (J Storrs Hall)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: RE Feedback on Computer Crime - Apology
Message-ID: <Aug.20.22.06.08.1990.1910@klaatu.rutgers.edu>
Date: 21 Aug 90 02:06:13 GMT
References: <4c517e56.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> <9008210016.AA14566@world.std.com>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 35

Barry writes:

    Copying a $500 software package by buying $5 worth of floppies seems
    to be a situation akin to storing diamonds in open containers in front
    of your house and then demanding the police stand guard lest some
    crook steal them. Certainly the person who stole them committed a
    crime, but if the society responds that perhaps you should store your
    diamonds in some better way is also valid, being as you are obviously
    fully aware of the problem you are creating. And if you cannot come up
    with the solution or find it too expensive (but safes cost money!),
    well, perhaps you are in the wrong business.
    ...
    Perhaps there is no solution. So, therefore, we should subsidize the
    profitability of this industry with billions of tax dollars?

This, of course, is why the anarchocapitalist scheme is so appealing.
There *are* no tax dollars, and *all* the costs of doing business are
brought out in the price of the good.  If the software company had to
pay for its own copy protection both ways, the choice of means would 
be simply an economic calculation--as it should be.  

Furthermore, the question of property rights in software would *also*
be a matter of economic calculation.  The question of property rights
in information is going to become much more serious in the future, as
nanotechnology begins to make matter duplication possible.  Without
a straightforward way to define property rights appropriately in a
whole succession of different situations, a holy mess will ensue.
Look as the science fiction stories that deal with the introduction
of the matter duplicator:  most of them predict the breakdown of 
society in some form.  (I'm thinking of one in particular by George O.
Smith--can anyone remember the title?)

So I think software is a test case for the future--of everything!

--JoSH