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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ames!pasteur!cory.Berkeley.EDU!seitz
From: seitz@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Matthew Eric Seitz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: shrink-wrap copying...
Message-ID: <788@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu>
Date: 17 Feb 88 05:46:07 GMT
References: <8055@g.ms.uky.edu> <174@piring.cwi.nl> <39450@sun.uucp> <39910@sun.uucp> <971@uop.edu> <297@bernina.UUCP> <2281@charon.unm.edu>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu
Reply-To: seitz@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Matthew Eric Seitz)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <2281@charon.unm.edu> hansb@ariel.unm.edu.UUCP (Hans Bechtel) writes:
>
>I know of a store in a big city in New Mexico that after they buy the
>software to sell, they open up the package, copy it, and pass it to
>a few of their friends, shrink-wrap it again, and put it back on the
>shelves for sale.
>
>I won't mention any names here, but I think it is wrong to do the above.
>
>Hans Bechtel

The computer store I have worked at also did something similar to this.  We
would make a copy of software to demonstrate and then reshrink-wrap it.
The reason is that customer's keep wanting two otherwise mutually exclusive
things: 1)  They want to see something demonstrated before they buy it and 2)
they want a shrink-wrap fresh copy of software to buy.  We couldn't afford to 
keep an original of every program strictly for demonstration purposes.  Since
we had a very liberal exchange policy on defective merchandise, we felt that
the very slight risk of damaging the original during copying was worth it.  We
would also test the original after copying to make sure it still worked before
shrink-wrapping.  However, any of the copies made were strictly for in-store
demo, they never left the premises and no copies were distributed.

						-Matthew Seitz