#Continued.. some ideas
8 messages in this thread
"Borrowing" is not a crime — stealing is.
About the best analogy to software is books. You can borrow a friends'
reference book, read it, and return it. No injured party. If you photo-copy
it then it's theft. Now, in most cases, buying the book is gonna be a whole
lot cheaper than taking the borrow copy and to a print shop.
Something I'm not too clear on about piracy is, someone (normally) has to buy a
copy of the program to get it in the first place. If I laid out X amount of
dollars for something why should I give it to someone else for free?
it is normally a friend -> friend transfer that never ends… with the
exception of those ego-damaged individuals who are making points with potential
friends and aquaintainces by providing something of value, albeit stolen.
–Ben–
I understand how — just not the why. If I popped $499 (that IS the price,
right?) for PCLO+, I'm sure as hell not going to give it to a friend. He can
buy his own.
Steve,
While you think that way, what often happens is that a group will split the
price and share it. One or more of them will pass it out, with or without being
paid for it, and so it goes… the small leak becomes a torrent as the program
gets farther away from the original owner. Other groups will sometimes have an
arrangement wherein each member contributes a piece of software, more or less
depending on the ability of the member to 'crack'. If a member is good at
cracking, he will not be expected to contribute in other, more costly ways. The
member who does not crack, will buy an expensive piece in exchange for the
cracker's contribution on a lot of other packages. Think about it… one person
buys a $500 package, and in return ends up with that $500 package, as well as
thousands of dollars worth of games, business stuff, utilities, educational,
and recreational software.
You may have guessed that I was a member of such a group, a fact I am not now
proud of. Interestingly enough, I did actually buy anything that I ended up
using. Having seen the good sales of Amiga software in the early days, before
the pirates started getting into the act, and having come into contact with a
lot of talented people who deserve to be rewarded heavily for their efforts, I
now only buy unprotected software. Seeing the damage piracy can do only serves
to take the edge off the challenge and monetary savings. I only wish more
people could see that.
Regards, Larry.
Another way of getting the initial purchase if it's commercial software (as
opposed to games) is having not overly ethical people pass out copies of
software that they've had their place of employment buy! What is expensive for
an individual to buy with personal money may be, relatively speaking, peanuts
for a large organization such as a university to buy. All it takes is one
unethical person with access to corporate buying resources to start the ball
rolling.
A nit-picking point (I LOVE nit-picking): Photocopying a book or copying
software isn't theft; it's breach of copyright. I'm not condoning it, just
getting definitions straight.
Your question is easy to answer: "Do unto others as you would have others do
unto you". Presumably if someone gives away copies of stuff that they've
bought, they hope that the gesture will be reciprocated. There's also the
"pride" aspect of being able to say "*I* broke XYZ's copy protection, so
there!".
Please see Don Curtis' msg on the subject (94458). Photocopying a book or the
unauthorized duplication of software is theft of intellectual property. Theft,
whether that of a physical object or of intellectual property, is still theft.