Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!sri-unix!mar@Mit-Borax.ARPA From: mar@Mit-Borax.ARPA Newsgroups: net.micro Subject: re: software piracy Message-ID: <12069@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Sat, 7-Apr-84 13:02:40 EST Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12069 Posted: Sat Apr 7 13:02:40 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 13-Apr-84 05:56:15 EST Lines: 19 From: Mark A. Rosenstein A better anology than car theft is the problems the entertainment industry is going through with tape recorders for both records and movies. People have been copying records onto cassettes longer than there have been home computers, and the record industry has not found a fix for that yet. Records do have better quality than tapes, and consequently many people buy the record anyway, also to get the album cover, however that is the same as buying some software to get the instructions. The closest thing the entertainment industry has found to a solution is taxing the purchase of blank tapes, which has been proposed but never adopted (hopefully they never will). The problem seems to be fundamental that for any read/write media that is usefull, it is possible to make illicit copies of materials distributed on that media. Perhaps personal ethics are the only thing stopping this from getting compeletly out of proportion. -Mark