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From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: RE Feedback on Computer Crime
Message-ID: <9008212119.AA10338@world.std.com>
Date: 21 Aug 90 21:19:28 GMT
References: <4c5548de.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM>
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From: Peter Nelson
>  Consider cattle-stealing in western states.  Cattle stealing 
>  has historically been a fairly easy crime to commit.  It is
>  hard to guard thousands of acres of range land.   So as a result
>  historically the response has been to have vigorous enforcement
>  and very tough sentencing of people who steal cattle.  "Frontier
>  justice" for cattle or horse thieves was no joke.  

I think it's important to distinguish that in a case like this we're
talking about perhaps dozens of bad guys, a few incidents per county,
and very tangible property (the cattle) etc. There's a difference
between "either you have the cow or I do" and vagaries of lost income.
In this software issue we're talking about a sizeable percentage of
the population, potentially tens of millions of people, being the
subject of criminal investigations.

Notice the potential damage (confusion, whatever) once we begin to
allow the concept of lost income without any loss of tangible
property.

For example, in the case of Lotus vs Paperback Software we get a case
that could be (perhaps unfairly) interpreted as the court putting
someone out of business merely because they were a direct, close
competitor. They sold the same thing, much as GE and Black and Decker
both selling blenders, both with multi-speed controls and clearly both
intended to mix foods. One wonders, in fact, why Mr. Coffee (or
whoever was first) hasn't managed to sue all the other manufacturers
of "electronic drip coffee-makers designed for easy home or office
use".

Now, yes, I understand the claimed cost of developing all their
interfaces etc., and that may even be a valid argument.

But the real slippery slope we have to distinguish here is whether or
not we can accept, as a general principal, whether anguished cries of
competition ought to be responded to with government intervention via
various design copyright (etc) laws?

You make several "anguished cries", fine, I don't dispute them. I'm
just not sure that mere anguished cries of pain (in an economic and
business context) justify govt intervention.

EMC, a peripherals manufacturer, has recently announced that they are
going completely out of the DEC market because there is simply no
profit in it any more. Other third-party companies are like to follow.
They give various reasons why, all of which could probably be cured
(for a few of them anyhow) through legislation.

For example, we could legislate that computer manufacturers like DEC
maintain strict proprietary controls on their hardware interfaces and
severely limit their licensing soas to ensure profitability in the
third-party market. Would this be reasonable legislation to enact?

>  I don't think it comes to billions.  But obviously we have to
>  decide how important it is to us to have a viable, commercial
>  software industry.

That's the real question, do "we" decide? Or more importantly, is it
likely that legislating that there must be a healthy software industry
will produce the desired results? And healthy for whom? The
manufacturers or the customers? You may not be able to get both.

For example, if I am given broad monopoly on a particular software
concept, say the entire idea of spreadsheets (which I believe at least
one company is claiming right now in court! or did recently) wouldn't
the best way to run my business be to find a price point where I can
obtain a particular income with minimum customers?

It certainly can be a lot more profitable to have 100 customers at
$100,000/copy than 10,000 customers at $1,000/copy. To sell and
service to those 100 customers I probably need only a handful of
staff. To sell and service 10,000 customers I probably need at least
10x as many people.

Now, you might argue that no one would pay $100K for a spreadsheet,
even if I were the only source. Would they pay $10K? $20K? $5K?

You can say the same applies to to anything, but it's particularly
dicey when the market has been granted relative monopolies and
competition has either been eliminated or bullied away (by threat of
litigation, I know *I'm* not going into the spread-sheet biz soon, how
about you?)

The point being that we are now simply in a classic linear-programming
problem with the constraints highly biased (via govt intervention)
towards minimizing my customer base and maximizing my cost.

I don't know, but we have to be careful with the consequences of
answering anguished cries of pain with copious and regular doses of
state-supplied morphine, no matter how our hearts feel.

        -Barry Shein

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