Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!we13!ihnp4!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!JOSEPH@RUTGERS.ARPA From: JOSEPH@RUTGERS.ARPA Newsgroups: net.micro Subject: Software Piracy Message-ID: <12667@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Tue, 24-Apr-84 18:14:56 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12667 Posted: Tue Apr 24 18:14:56 1984 Date-Received: Mon, 30-Apr-84 06:01:10 EDT Lines: 41 I am joining this discussion a bit late, but I have an item that I would like to bring to light. One of the biggest reasons why schools don't teach Johnny not to steal software is that schools themselves present a large piracy problem. Usually a school district lays aside money for hardware, say 6 personal computers. In less enlightened districts (read: mostplaces, USA) The software and application of these computers are left up to the individual schools or worse, the individual teachers. Now these folk with miniscule budgets have to make a good showing so that the school board doesn't conclude that teaching computer skills is a waste of money. What do they do? Well, in my experience, they search around trying to find the application or language that would best serve their students and then are brought up short by learning that they will have to buy 6 of them at $200 a crack. And they don't dare give the originals to the students anyway, they would have to buy dozens of them every year to make up for lost/stolen/crashed disks. The alternative, buy one and make copies. This is the most often chosen alternative. Most software companies are not set up for a legal alternative like inexpensive multi CPU licensing of Microcomputer software for educational institutions with backups at cost. How can educators teach Johnny not to pirate software when all his educational software at school is pirated! Another large group of copywrite infringers are large corporations. Many companies put in hundreds of personal computer workstations only to find out that they are going to have to buy hundreds of copies of Lotus 1-2-3 to run on them. A popular but illegal solution here too is to go underground and make copies. Not wholesale like buying one copy of Lotus and making 99 copies but more like, buying 50 and using backups on half of the systems. Economically desireable but wrong. There, I said my piece. I get tired of seeing piracy discussions that only focus on teenage "hoodlums" or hard core pirates. There is an amazing amount of revenue lost even in the more respectible worlds of business and education. -------