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From: oyster@uwmacc.UUCP (Vicious Oyster)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: Re: Tires and Software and Right and Wrong
Message-ID: <1439@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 28-Aug-85 13:04:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.1439
Posted: Wed Aug 28 13:04:00 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 30-Aug-85 01:23:13 EDT
References: <315@brl-tgr.ARPA> <210@mot.UUCP>
Reply-To: oyster@uwmacc.UUCP (Vicious Oyster)
Organization: UWisconsin-Madison Academic Comp Center
Lines: 33
Summary: Ideas vs. implementation

In article <210@mot.UUCP> qv@mot.UUCP (Brad Castalia) writes,
 in reply to Allan Pratt (APratt.osbunorth@XEROX.ARPA):
>The difficult problem of copyrights in general, and even
>more so as concerns software, are created by the capitalist system that
>insists that everything must have its price.  This runs headlong into
>the more fundamental principle that ideas are free, and the crucial
>social importance of information flowing without hindrance amongst the
>members of society so that it will get into the hands of people who are
>able and willing to make productive use of it to the benefit of the society.
>It is very unfortunate that a capitalist economy creates this bind in a
>democratic society.  But the problem is with the system that creates this
>difficulty, not the individuals who (justly or not) are trying (and 
>succeeding) to get around it.

  I would submit that there is a distinct difference between ideas and the
realization of those ideas in software.  The former can be conveyed as freely
as the society in which you live allows; the latter takes the consumption of
real resources (man-hours, computer time, coffee and donuts, etc.) to be
generated usefully.  If you see a nifty spread-sheet or game, you can go right
home and write a similar piece of software for your own use if you so desire.
That's using your "free" ideas.  But if you see that same piece of software
and copy it gratis, that's using the fruit of somebody elses' labor.  That 
should be no more palatable than if you toiled for a whole semester producing
a full virtual operating system for your university OS class, only to have 
some mindless hack who's been sleeping through the class copy it and
hand it in as his/her own work.  In both cases somebody benefits by another's
labor without the knowledge of the laborer.  The same problem has been a 
thorn in the side of the recording industry for years, and they seem no closer
to solving the problem than they ever were (can you imagine trying to prohibit
the sale of blank floppies?).

 - joel "vo" plutchak
{allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!oyster