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From: APratt.osbunorth@XEROX.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Tires and Software and Right and Wrong
Message-ID: <315@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 30-Jul-85 16:26:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.315
Posted: Tue Jul 30 16:26:22 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Aug-85 05:09:49 EDT
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
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>A car
>without tires as about as useless as a computer without software. If
>someone buys tires for their car, there is no law stopping them from
>selling them to a friend, or putting them on another car. This is not
>considered theft. 

The difference between software and tires is that when you sell tires, you no
longer have the use of them, while in selling software, you do.

Computer software, cassette tapes, and video tapes are a class of product 
which our nation's laws do not cover very well. The characteristics of that 
class are that the medium costs little, and an original item is easily 
duplicated with little or no (in the case of computer disks) degredation. The 
difference between software and tires, then, is that when you sell tires, you 
no longer have the use of them, while in selling software, you do.

If you want to go on using your tires, and your friend also wants to have 
tires to use, he will have to buy another set from the manufacturer. When that
sale takes place, the manufacturer will be partially reimbursed for his actual
expenditures in research, design, production, and, in general, for providing 
that item to the buyer. He also hopes to make a profit, because he wants to 
have bread on his table, as do his employees.

If you have two cars, you are free to buy just one set of tires, and put the 
tires on one car or the other as the Spirit moves you. As you point out, you 
are also free to do this with software (except in the case of CPU-keyed 
dangles). The key to the copy-protection issue is that you can copy the item 
AND GIVE IT AWAY TO SOMEBODY WHO WOULD OTHERWISE HAVE TO BUY IT.

The argument that he would not, in fact, pay the price to buy it, and the 
manufacturer is therefore not losing a sale, doesn't hold water. If you want 
to live in a capitalistic society, you have to play by certain rules. When the 
price of something is too high, people don't buy it, and the manufacturer has 
to lower his price, or make the item more valuable at the same price, or go 
out of business. Piracy is not a valid (moral, ethical) alternative. To say 
that it is not illegal is to pick nits with lawyers. Regardless of how the 
legislature in your State or in Washington happens to define it, the 
Capitalist judgement of Right and Wrong must judge that practice Wrong, 
because you are denying the purveyor his due.


					-- Allan Pratt