Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!fmr
From: fmr@cwi.nl (Frank Rahmani)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Re: Software Development And Piracy (Spurred By FTL replies)
Message-ID: <728@sering.cwi.nl>
Date: 15 Dec 88 08:14:32 GMT
References: <142@usl-pc.usl.edu>
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 40

> An interesting moral question (in places outside the U.S., where, as
> Reagan always tells us, there is no poverty):
> If your family starving, is it right to steal in order to feed them?
Can only speak for Europe:
in most European countries stealing is NOT PUNISHABLE in aforementioned
circumstances as long as you don't steal any luxury stuff.
By the way, this analogy is interesting in another context:
although the number of shoplifters is significantly smaller than the
number of software copiers the police never gets around to do anything
more than write their names down. Persecuting and punishing them all
would cost 1000 times the amount of the damage they do (at least in
Netherland).
Thec whole discussion about this subject is like raindancing:ABSOLUTELY
USELESS!! There is no NO NO way to stop somebody to copy a program,
and while he's busy why not make another ten copies for friends?
If you pay me $50 for the name of a 'pirate', I would first contact that

person and ask him to give me copies of some nice big programs for a value of
let's see, say $500.  So theoretically I win $450 and that sounds ok.
Find some nifty tricks to protect your software and people will start
competing with you to break your protection. And once its broken...
Big manuals aren't a problem either, Ive occasionally seen people
copying 1000 pges manuals (takes 35 minutes) and once you have the
looseleaf version, the automatic copymachine will unattendedly
make  whatever number of copies you need.
Then there's this huge market in books ("All about...") that are
nothing else than camouflaged copies of original manuals intended
to get the owners of pirated software going just as if they had the
original program.
By the way, if you wonder if I use pirated software (it sometimes is
just on my desk without me asking for it and I haven't the slightest
idea who dropped it there): I NEVER got a pirated program to work
(because of the lack of documentation) except for one command:
FORMAT.
fmr@cwi.nl
-- 
It is better never to have been born. But who among us has such luck?
Maintainer's Motto:
	If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.
These opinions are solely mine and in no way reflect those of my employer.