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From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.misc
Subject: Re: Software Development And Piracy (Spurred By FTL replies)
Message-ID: <2874@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 22 Dec 88 14:16:22 GMT
References: <3135@sugar.uu.net>
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 38

From article <3135@sugar.uu.net>, by peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva):
" ... Your argument seems basically to be that
" from a libertarian standpoint copyrights are a distortion of the market.

You and the other software developers who have been filling my mailbox
of late seem to have a facility for jumping to conclusions.  I did not
argue that copyrights were a bad thing because they distort the free
market.  I argued that you were wrong to say that piracy distorts
the free market, and I stated that copyright laws distort the free
market.  So do laws against slavery.  That doesn't mean I'm against
them.

"...
" it's not morally wrong (from a libertarian viewpoint) for there to be such
" a thing as intellectual property rights.

If you mean that it's not wrong for intellectual property rights to
be recognized under the law, I agree.  If you mean that you have provided
a moral basis for such rights by this argument from convenience, I
can't agree with that.  Let's do away with criminal trials and just
consider accusation by a public prosecutor as _equivalent_ to being
found guilty by a jury.  It would be convenient, and we can consider
that the trial is held in an imaginary world as a rationale.

But I can't speak for libertarians.

" therefore immoral or unethical to pirate software.

So long as piracy remains illegal because it violates copyrights, I
would tend to agree that it's unethical, though the matter is not
obvious.  And there may be good reasons for extending copyright law to
cover software binaries.  But that the laws are justified because the
behavior they prohibit would in any case be immoral -- this is something
else again.  Promises made in Libertaria are not binding here.  If you
want the protection of a contract, you have to suffer the inconvenience
of actually executing one.  You can't just pretend you did.

		Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu