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Educating Youngsters About Piracy
Colin Winters writes: "The New York Times has an article that is a follow-up to the recent raid by the government on pirates in universities. Some professors believe that "By the time we get them, they already believe it [piracy]'s right." An interesting read. There's also an interesting bit on how business software is now 1/3 pirated, down from 1/2 in 1995. In America, it's only 24%. From the way companies like Microsoft whine about piracy, I'd assumed the figures were increasing, not decreasing."
because my 10 year old doesn't understand why I can't just make a copy of Pod Racer so we can multiplayer at home.
Especially since his Mom has warez copies of MS Office on her machine that she uses to writes her papers.
I know what the Internet is, what the hell is this Interweb business?!
By educating you mean show them where to download the latest P2P program and show them where the warez/crackz sites are. Right? :)
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Piracy. It seems to evoke some romantic image of sailing the seven seas, drinking rum and singing sea shanties. People, when told 'you are a software pirate' seem to shrug it off. Call it its real name, and you can change people's minds.
Its not piracy, its stealing.
MS Dos is (was) incredibly easy to pirate back in the days when it was widely used. If it was never pirated, it would never have become nearly as popular as it was. This would have made Windows less popular. Microsoft has piracy to thank in part for its success.
Successful software WILL be pirated. That's how you know that people are willing to buy your products. In the long run, the corporate clients who have to worry about staying legal within their contracts will comprise most of the legal purchases of software, while the little guy (individual persons like you and me) will still probably pirate the stuff. This is how software gains grassroots acceptance. I think piracy by some individuals is good for business. It's better than any advertising campaign.
Could the drop in percentage of software being pirated have less to do with individuals pirating less than they did before, and just the sheer number of computer users increasing?
In general, even the ease of use of peer 2 peer networks requires a minimum of tech saavy, and a faster broadband connection to make pirating your average 500+MB CD-Rom worth it, two things which the growing population new to computers don't have.
In previous years, the percentages of computer users who actually were real computer users and not just people who owned one for email or web browsing was certainly higher.
With this decrease in more advanced users compared to the general public, and the increase in the sheer size of pirated programs needing to be sent across your connection (Games, for example, going from a couple megs to a couple hundred in size), I'd see those two as the reason for the drop.
Isn't knowing how much software in the country is pirated a bit like claiming to know how many rapes go unreported each year? It's a statistic that is impossible to gather by the nature of the question.
I'll tell you one thing I hate about software these days. If I want to play a multi-player game of Ghost Recon or something with my brother, I have to buy at least two copies of the game (at more than $50 each!). However, if I want to play a multi-player game of Monopoly (pun intended) or Parcheesi, I don't have to buy a new game set for all four or eight people I'm going to play against.
by going to:
/ www.nytimes.com/2001/12/25/technology/25HACK.html
2 5HACK.html
http://archives.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http:/
OR
http://college.nytimes.com/2001/12/25/technology/
Editors: please start putting in these links in the stories--you know this crowd is big on privacy.
I think piracy is a bigger issue than we think, rooted in the ideas that stealing from a big corporation isn't stealing, because they obviously screwed little people over to get where they are today, so it's alright for us to screw over "them". It's a nameless, faceless "them" kids think they're screwing with, not individual people. Where I went to college there were countless students who had no problem ripping off credit card companies ("it's the companies we're hurting, not people, and the companies have millions to spare so who cares?") to get stuff they wanted, I was appauled, but there was no way to convince them that somewhere down the line, they were hurting the guy next door.
Piracy is about the fact that nobody cares about anybody, and that's just the fact of it.
spacefem.com
They've succesfully brainwashed slashdot as well, or what?
I have two thoughts on the matter:
1) re-education doesn't work. No one likes having perceived priveliges removed, rightfully or not. No one likes being fed pablum to explain why it's wrong (Disney and FreeJackster.)
If something doesn't seem wrong to a majority and the harm isn't directly observable, then it's not going to be curbed by re-education.
Also, we need to make a distinction between Piracy and Copyright Infringement. They aren't the same. Where copyright infringement is being claimed, copyright law needs to be reformed to match the people's behavior, within balance, not to curb it.
2) maturity does work, to an extent. The 27 year old quoted at the end felt he'd outgrown warez. Of course, the 45-year old who was pissed he couldn't download oldies mp3s counters that example.
I've been wanting to a legit copy of Office 97 rather than living on the MSDN copy from work (should I ever have to get another job). I found a guy on eBay selling a sealed unregistered OEM copy for $75. I used "buy it now" to end the auction and used eBay's own BillPoint to pay. This happened three days ago.
About six hours later I got notice that the auction had ended at Microsoft's request because the good were pirated (VERO rule or somethign like that). See the problem? I already paid for the goods, and the charge has cleared my bank. The listing is gone, and I haven't heard from the seller. What happens to my money?
I've written eBay about it, but of course haven't heard back probably because of the Christmas holiday. Has this happened to anyone else, and if so, what happened?
I think that most of the "pirates" know more about the illegalities of what they're doing more than the actual people aresting them. In fact I would bet my legal software on it.
Now comes the question of why is Piracy so big? Well why is drug use and prostitution so big? Well they make people feel good (not endorsing either, but lets face it ... coke heads like the feeling they get from stuffing their nostrils with coke) ... Getting something for free has always made people feel good about themselves.
Let's figure in the MS-Factor ... MS makes most of it's money from site licenses and OEM's ... they don't make their money from off the shelf Operating Systems. Now their games and apps, yessir they pay for all those. According to MS Though you _can_ have a the same copy of Office and Windows at home and office ... so long as you don't use the computers at the same time (which is technically physically impossible) ... But MS does make games and I will admit that I know of people "stealing" from MS everyday. Do I think that they're criminals? Hell no ... I blame the MS for making a standard that is used in schools and accepted in the office that we are taxed for in our homes for compatability issues.
Now lets throw in the OSS factor. Of course OSS doesn't have to worry about piracy, hell they ask people to share (dumb bastards *note the previous comment was meant to poke fun as a person who is coming from the stance of microsoft*). So what's the solution, THERE ISN'T ONE
So why is it so big??? Well it's promoted. You think someone would buy an Apex DVD player that reads CD-R's because they thought it would look better on their shelf system? Hell no ... they bought it so they could play VCD's on the thing. You think they bought their 12x burner because they wanted to make compilation CD's from CD's they already owned? No they wanted to copy CD's, make Audio CD's, and VCD's. You think that they got broadband to download on the web faster ... lol ... NO ... they got it for that wonderous P2P that is out there to make things easier for those floating in the dangerous seas.
All in all ... and in a nutshell ... piracy won't stop ... there will never be an end ... if everyone who was a software pirate were arrested then 80% of america would be sitting in a jail cell right now ... because we've all "stole from the man".
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
The difference being that what is being stolen is copies of copies. And it isn't tangible property, so dealers have just as many cars in their lots to sell to people willing to pay.
Of the "billions of dollars revenue each year lost to software piracy" how much of that is to thirteen year olds downloading a $10,000 copies of 3D Studio Max from a warez site? I'm sure sonny just would have bought it if he couldn't have downloaded it.
Sure.
...then you have an even deeper problem that neither the software industry, or any other media publishers want to address.
And that is that more and more people, worldwide, are begining to believe that copyrights, and so-called "intelectual property" in general, do not deserve all the protections that they are afforded.
No one wants to address this because it is the publishers' biggest fear: copyright will lose respect and eventually be abolished. Their entire revenue stream is based upon the idea that data, be it software, music, video, or whatever, can be artifically kept scarce. And that's just not true.
What the whole Napster thing has done is to demonstrate that a good number of people (enough to make a "political majority") do not think that CDs are worth $18 a piece. People are now realizing that CDs cost under $1 to make and that the artists aren't getting the remainder. The people are making it known that the recording industry is NOT worth $16 a CD anymore. And since, unlike an ideal marketplace, you can not negotiate the price of a CD, potential customers are looking elsewhere to obtain the products at the price they feel it should be.
Piracy itself is not the primary target of these raids. The real target is attitudes towards copyrights. Since people are no longer respecting them on their face, the industry is attempting to convert the lost respect into fear of the law.
And that fear can only be provided by a copyright police state.
-Legion
That's a load of crap.... exactly how many people registered their $10 shareware.... maybe 1 out of 100,000? The majority of people don't think about it as a matter of principle, they just see a way to steal without accountablity. If they were to stop and think about it was a matter of princliple, I think most people would realize that what they are doing is no different than going in to Circuit City and taking things. If you don't feel you are getting software worth the sticker price, you have the option to not use it! it's that simple.
My dad bought a Christler in '86. It was a piece of junk. Do you think it would be OK if he went to the factory and stole a few cars? Oftentimes when I eat at McDonalds, I get the shits. Is it moraly correct for me to hop over the counter, grab a bunch of food and run out the door? RedHat sold me a CD with an exploitable copy of WU-FTP. Can I steal a bunch of CDs or a development server from them?
Certainly there are those, perhaps even the majority, who pirate for entirely selfish reasons. But there are those who pirate because they see it as striking at a morally bankrupt corporations heart.
I would bet that the percent of people who pirate for moral reasons is less than 5%.
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These manufactured piracy figures would be even remotely useful if they included demographics for each group of software pirates. If the majority of that 25% were, say, Mercedes Benz driving, diamond-clad rich folk who light cigars with hundred dollar bills, then we would be worried.
At present, these buckaneers seem to mostly be low-income students and others who have a compulsion to use the latest and greatest software, without the funding to back it up. Rather than paying bazillions of dollars towards enforcement and purchasing new laws, software companies could stand to make a huge tax write-off if they called this willful taking of their software a Charitable Donation.
Big software companies practically print their own money giving out these wares as name brand commercial products, and they enjoy insane profit margins once the development costs get paid off. Since profit==taxes, they should try to encourage software piracy, pull a figure out of their ass equivalent to their taxable income, and then end up paying a few dollars, rather than a few hundred million.
(did I mention, IANAL and IANAA?)
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
Theres a diffrence between right and wrong. Its WRONG to steal. However its RIGHT to share. Piracy is right, but its illegal.
I know everyone here may be confused by what I said, but honestly sharing is supposed to be a good thing, its RIGHT to share software with your friend whos too poor to buy it. So to stop piracy, bringing up moral issues just makes people support piracy MORE!
The only way to stop Piracy is to raid all pirates, and thats too expensive. So you have a situation where, People are going to pirate software, the best thing you can do is make it so its easier to buy software from a store, than to pirate it off the net (huge long download, or buy it from a store) and there shouldnt be $500 software because no one in their right mind will buy it. IF software were $10-$20 then I'm sure most people would buy software like most people buy games. But when software like photoshop is $500, and you NEED photoshop, well, you are going to sit for 3 days downloading a 500+ meg ISO before paying $500.
IT comes down to this, make money off of convience, not off of the product itself, its easier for me to go to a store and buy a CD, than to download it, burn it, etc etc. I'd pay to have it all done for me. I'll pay $10 and if its really good software, maybe $20, even $30, but theres no way I'm paying over $50 for any software nevermind $500.
To stop piracy, lower prices, and offer good enough deals so that its easier to buy than to pirate.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
This is how you educate people about piracy :)
(not porn, not goatse.cx)
Henry
i don't do sigs. oops.
You're right, the analogy doesn't hold up.
Sure, stealing is wrong, but might the term 'piracy' applied here be so over-the-top that young people simply can't take it seriously? What are our other options?
- Intellectual theft (too vague)
- technovampirism (too bloody)
- software parasitism (too icky)
Hey, wait? Why don't we just call it "copyright violation?" That's accurate, after all. Doesn't sound scary enough? Maybe because it isn't all that scary.We aren't talking about truckloads of baby food being waylaid by highwaymen; everyone who pays for the software still get their goods, after all. Is it really justified to fight a war on copyright violation the same way you'd fight a war on drugs or terrorism? Does anyone really think every KaZaa user represents a lost sale of Office XP Professional?
Again, I'm not saying it isn't wrong. But so is speeding, and that could be brought under control by mandatory cell-linked speed monitors in vehicles. It would save lives, after all, so why don't we do it? It would appear that no one wants to push the personal privacy issue unless there's considerable money (not lives) at stake.
Perhaps the industry and society as a whole would benefit if we shifted to a more palatable equilibrium point, and treated copyright violations at the user level as they've been treated since the advent of photocopiers and audiotape: frowned upon, but tolerated.
And most software that is pirated is done so by people that collect warez; most of this software is never used _AT_ALL_ and if it is being used, this is mostly done by people that wouldn't have bought the software anyway; Joe A. User won't go to the computerstore to buy Photoshop; it's waaaay too expensive. He either uses the install at his work or "borrows" it from somebody else. There's no way he's going to buy Photo Shop. So that's another difference between theft and piracy: the losses for the industry a no where near the sum of pirated software. My guess it's less than 1% of the pirated software generates real loss.
Apart from companies, nobody is going to pay a hundred bucks for software they only use every once in a while. Unless they get it "for free" with their new PC. Companies are about the only ones you'd expect to actually buy software and most of them do so.
Conclusion: software piracy is no way near as large a problem as the "government" thinks it is. I am not saying it is good at all, but it just doesn't cause that much damage at all.
0x or or snor perron?!
While I can't state that this isn't true for some people (trading one blanket statement for another would make me a hypocrite) I CAN state that the majority of people I know aren't going to fill that statement. My friends and I certainly do bootleg our music; it's difficult to find one band that produces an album that has more quality than filler on it, so we pick and choose the songs we enjoy and download those individually. If an album comes out by a band we particularly like, we'll buy the album, but for the most part, we pirate our music.
However, we don't pirate our software (except for a few big titles
My friends are the same way. We don't, by and large, pirate software; sometimes we share, and if it's good enough, we'll buy it (that's how I came around to Baldur's Gate and Quake III). Music is one thing; software is a different story altogether.
I know people who feel the same way about movies; they pirate movies, since we have faster-than-god internet access at school, but if it's a good movie they'll go out and buy the DVD or the VHS. The only thing we really pirate and NEVER purchase is pr0n =)
I think Prof. Farber is trying to suggest that music piracy is a "gateway drug" for kids, but I don't really see any evidence of this. As someone (the article? don't remember) states, software piracy is down in recent years, even though CD burners are cheaper and broadband access is more widespread.
What is interesting (and potentially frightening) to see is this "war on piracy" turning into the next "war on drugs"... something to keep an eye on, I think.
Merry Xmas*,
~Aaron
(yeah, I'm an atheist, but I still celebrate Xmas, because it's a social holiday, too; so to all non-christian geeks out there, have a good one!)
student of animation and the fine arts
What I loathe are these kids on irc who think it's their birth right to every movie, game, and productivity application out there. They hardly even acknowledge that they're pirating software. I know people who have absolutely no legal games on their ill gotten operating systems yet somehow it's ok because "I wasn't going to buy it anyway". The people I know that do this aren't broke either, I almost wish they'd get busted just so they'd have to acknowledge that they're doing something that can have serious consequences. It just really grinds my gears when I go out and pay for a game ( I think 49.00 is reasonably priced ) and they pirate it and talk about how great it is, great but not great enough to buy?
I already have problems with the system, they want to teach my children about "Political Correctness" and other good little citizen values. I want my kids to think for themselves. I don't want the same people who tell me what my kids can and cant wear, eat, say, what to think or how to think.
This is a war of morals, My kids should be able to back up their games, eat peanut butter sandwiches, write stories about death/god, wear black, kiss, give gifts, tell a teacher they are incorrect, tell a grown up no, refuse to accept punishment.
Do I care if my kids are trading mp3's? No, they still buy CDs. I personally don't think an mp3 is much different than recording off the radio or cable music channel.
Warez.. Yes its wrong, you should always buy a game you like. Even the pirates say "If a game is worth playing, its worth buying..."
Make your own choice.
Microsoft faking evidence?
Microsoft illegaly using their market domination (apologists please note that I don't say monopoly) to lock out competition?
Microsoft forcing customers to buy another license although they already have one?
Microsoft forcing people to buy the product over and over again by breaking formats and standards?
The response of the average Microslave is:
"Oh well, that's just normal business. Everybody would do it if they could."
People pirating software?
"Oh well, that's just normal. Everybody does it."
P.S.: No, I don't pirate software, I even paid for my Linux distribution.
We should stand up against this kind of nonsense. It is little more than the industry trying to brainwash our kids to believe in their warped way of thinking.
Most of us here are young, and we, not the sickly old men that sit in CEO positions at music companies, are the future. We should teach our children ideals that will propel this nation beyond the dated zero sum game of economics that's been played for ages. We should teach them that information should be freely available to all, that US citizens rights should be respected, irrelevant of their differences, or the consequences of doing such, or "national security concerns".
Undermining the traditional system in the "real world" -- where politicians say that rights are important, but then disrespect and ignore them (i.e., Katie Sierra, who was prevented from wearing an anti-war T-shirt at school; Brandi Blackbear, who was suspended from school for "casting a spell on a teacher") -- will require resolve, disobedience, and awareness.
To undermine the traditional intellectual property system is something of slightly another matter, because its more convenient and easy. I do not propose that we take the moral high road, as Martin Luther King did when he fought racism by peaceful protests, and by allowing police to brutalize him. I suggest we take the path taken by Malcom X -- violent disobediance. Get roudy. Here's my recipe to undermine intellectual property:
(1) Support open-sourced software, or "open-information". Support it namely by using it, wherever possible, in place of closed-sourced software or information.
(2) Support "free" software or information, which is different from "open" software or information. This is software or information which is freely obtainable, but in which the source is closed. Normally, these endeavers are supported either by ads or by promotions for the "full product".
(3) If you use "free" software or information, don't support the sponsors economic endeavers by upgrading to the "full" product or watching their ads. If you want the full product, find a hack, or download a crack -- either a warez version or a crack for some serial numbers to be entered. If its ad-based, don't support the ads.
(4) To avoid supporting ads -- remember, we need to undermine the current zero-sum economic system as well -- create a HOSTS file for your browser. As a reply to this message, I'll post my HOSTS file. Disable animations or sounds from your browser -- many ads come in such form. If there's an ad-based program, like LimeWire, try to block the ads by deleting the file that might be responsible. If not, try to find a crack to block the ads. For LimeWire, since its open-sourced, this should be easy -- surely, someone must have released a patch to remove the ads. If you cannot remove the ads, simply ignore them. NEVER buy anything based off an internet AD. That support the ad-system which clogs our bandwidth.
(5) If you must get a commercial product, there are still ways to avoid supporting commercial endeavers. i. You can try to find warez for the product you want. Search the web from google.com. This is hard, because very few warez sites actually offer software -- most are just fronts for advertisements and porno. You can also try searching from a P2P program, like LimeWire. ii. Sometimes, a retailer will allow you to return a product even after its been opened. So open up the CD package and copy it. If it has copy-protection, you can try making a 1:1 copy by CloneCD.
(6) For textual information -- i.e., books, textbooks, scientific papers published, etc. If possible, offer these in pure format -- i.e., a PDF file or html file -- if you can overcome copy-protection. Otherwise, transcribe them. If only each person transcribes one book, out of every 10, that's millions of books you have online. You don't have to do it all at once. Many of you are very adept typists, and this should be no problem. I've found many transcribed books on LimeWire...even a copy of Crichton's "Jurassic Park".
(7) Most obviously, publicly protest against the intellectual property system.
Hope you found this helpful...
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
The LAW is not about whats right. The Law is about the economy and what we know works.
We know capitalism works. We know businesses make alot of money by selling what is essentially free.
However, this is all about the economy, and rich CEOs making billions of dollars off of us. It doesnt really help the people, it helps just a few rich CEOs have a few more million dollars.
So the question is, what is more important? Would the economy survive if it changed? Absolutely. Would CEOs be as rich as they are today? Definately not.
So CEOs dont want to make more average wages, they want to be billionares, and this is only possible if you sell overpriced software for $500.
Its not like developers get paid billions, no, some CEOs and guys in suits do.
Same with the RIAA, So its not about right or wrong, its a matter of, should we be getting this money? or should some rich guys in suits be getting this money?
Developers and Musicians wont be getting this money either way.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
"software piracy" isn't really piracy, and it's not really stealing either, because the origional product is still there. It simply is sealing value, something we consider inflation. Some people would even say it's not stealing very much value, because most people who "inflate" software woundn't buy the product.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
and how MS leveraged them to lock out innovation all over the map
and how the music industry has used them to lock out any distribution channel that they don't approve of
and how the movie industry is trying to use them to region code the whole planet, and used them as an excuse to try and put a 15 year old who wanted to play DVD's on linux in jail
and how they lead to laws like the DMCA that have nothing to do with copying, but everything to do with speech
and about how they call it piracy, as if those who copy are aken to those who board ships beat and kill people Yeah, I'm all for educating people!
Are you implying that 24% of all software is shoplifted in shrink-wrapped boxes from stores like Best Buy? No wonder they have those guys who get all touchy when you don't want them to look in your bag on the way out the door.
I do not have a signature
By the way. The reason people pirate software is twofold, software is too expensive and it's too much hassle to order it or to go to the shop. So the solution I expect within a decade or so when most people have really fast uplinks, is software for which you pay only when you use it (e.g. $0.10 for any image created with PhotoShop). By giving people dumb terminals and running the applications on some fast computers centrally, the need to install applications will also be gone and you will always have the latest and greatest version. This would most certainly make the lives of avg. computer users a lot more easy, it would also about stop piracy.
0x or or snor perron?!
You can claim that piracy is lower for whatever other reasons, but the fact is, tricks like the Windows XP Auth Code do reduce piracy. Granted, they don't stop the tech-aware people -- you can find cracked copies -- but I've personally watched it stop piracy in from "normal folk". People with XP preinstalled can't just share their OEM CD's and let others install from it. Families now realize they're supposed to buy multiple copies for multiple PCs -- and if you recall the Slashdot article about the sales of additional licenses, that has been even more successful that MS expected.
Now for something else you don't want to hear: Microsoft is justified in whining. They do have many, many people using their software without paying. Even if we see the software as crap, it's apparently "good enough" to be pretty damn popular. They deserve payment for that 24% (for Windows, probably more) of their software that's being pirated.
And their attempts to stop piracy haven't been unfair, either! There's all this complaining about the Windows Auth Code -- and not even anecdotal evidence of it harming anyone. So you let the software authorize itself, big deal. For the tiny, tiny percentage of people who upgrade a lot, they just need to give MS a call, and MS will authorize their new code. Big deal.
So let's get this straight: MS isn't whining, it's trying to educate consumers who don't realize that sharing copies or installing on multiple PC's isn't legal. And they appear to have been very successful in stopping piracy of XP among the "common" people.
I hate MS as much as the next guy, and I could drone on for hours about their monopolistic, anticompetitive actions that are unfair. But I'm not going to slander them for trying to recover a few billion bucks that they have rightfully earned.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
I saw a poster (I think somewhere after 1995) with that 30-ish % figure for the US. It was a poster of the world with every country labelled with a percent.
The US was the lowest as I remmeber. Most coutries cracked 50% and a large chunk cracked 80%. I remmeber russia and china and a few other counttries were up into the 98% range.
Then I look at microsoft. I look at it's gross product. I see that it's gross product, if it were a nation, would be the 5th largest in the world.
I absolutely feel no pity for them. Granted, I do not pirate software anymore, but I used to, when I was a college student and was making no money at all. I buy it now, or do without. Most of the software I buy is games.
So, I hear these arguments from the BSA saying that piracy increases software costs. I think that it's a lie. Simple economics says that they will charge what the market will bear. The market bears this price, and they will not decrease the cost just because all the software in russia suddenly becomes legit. They will charge us the same, because we'll take it. They may charge less for the russian one, because it's a different market.
I'm sorry if this viewpoint bothers professional programmers. I really am, but I really doubt you'll be getting more money when all the russian MS Office goes legit either.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
but that doesn't make it a biscuit.
No matter how many times people scream from the rooftops that unauthorized copying is stealing, that doesn't make it so.
No question about it, copyright infringement is illegal. When discussing a company like microsoft who (allegedly) stole Stac's code for doublespace, it's hard to get a groundswell of sympathy for their "lost revenue".
If people don't feel too bad about copyright infringement to do it, some people think that they can change this by calling it stealing. The use of that word conjurs up imagery of parents scolding children about not ripping off candybars from the corner store.
Let's examine this, by making an illegal copy of Windows 2x, you have denied a sale to Microsoft and have cost them money. By costing them money, you have stolen from Microsoft.
Every linux distro that includes Samba is a potential lost sale for Microsoft. For every one of those lost sales, Microsoft has lost money. If one follows the logic train, RedHat, Mandrake, SuSe, Debian, Slackware, Yellowdog, and countless others are stealing money out of Microsoft's pockets by costing them sales of Win2k.
It doesn't add up. Even if it is illegal and morally wrong, the former example is no more stealing than the latter.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
That was a triumph of spin control. But it was done by the pirates. Anyone remember far enough back to when "Pirate's Harbor" ran full-page ads in Byte for tools to remove copy protection?
Those are all disanalogies. Some closer analogies (I do not think that there are any that are really good), might be:
You buy a music CD make a copy of it and give it to a friend. This is the closest, but it is so close as to hardly be an analogy.
You buy a novel and photocopy it. Less close, still the same issue, copyright violation.
You buy a crappy Chrysler in '86, and then build a factory in your back yard and produce an exact duplicate Chrysler. Not as close, but closer the remarkably weak analogies you offered.
You go to McDonalds, dressed as an employee. You walk behind the counter and pretend to take orders, exactly copying the movements of your neighboring employees. Not close at all, but pretty much as good as analogy as your goofy McDonalds one.
The crux of copyright viloation is that duplicating something is illegal. Some people think that duplication is not immoral, some do not. If you are going to argue about this with an analogy, you need to make one that illustrates a moral issue by an act of copying. Perhaps you might take the license approach and say that those who copy are violating a license, so those who get upset about GPL or BSD license violations (I know I do) should be just as upset at illegal copying of software. I think that that is a better analogy, though still needing work.
Hyperbole is the worst thing ever.
This applies to much more than just computer piracy though.
The way I see it, you follow whatever you believe. I don't give a shit what the law says. The law wasn't made for me. It was made for the goddamn mega-corporations. As long as I don't get caught I don't feel any worse for breaking the law than if there never was such a law.
Its the same thing with most people and marijuana. Everyone who smokes it feels it should be legal. That's millions of people. Yet it still remains illegal. And as long as you don't get caught, who cares if you're breaking a stupid law that shouldn't have been made in the first place? Right?
There's my $.02
I don't mean to say that stealing is right. in fact, apart from absent mindedly walking out with a pair of earrings -- with which i wanted to surprize my wife at the checkout lane, i've never stolen anything in my life.
but having thought thru this napster-sharing thing a bit i'm finding it hard to call it stealing. stealing means that one person (the stealer) robs someone else (the stealee) of possesion and/or the use of the item stolen. that just isn't the case. the only thing stolen from anyone is the 'scarcity' created by the record companies. by napstarizing, people are robbing the record companies and the record companies alone from their ownership of the 'scarcity'.
However, it seems to me, that by affording these companies legal protection for them to create this fabricated 'scarcity' seems very far removed from the free-market that we claim to have established.
Although i fail to see the 'intellectual' part of the equation in the belly dancing of the likes of britney spears let's for a minute assume there is this 'intellectual property' they've been hammering me with. how is anyone destroying it? by sharing, we're spreading it (and in britney spears' case, god help us). i don't see any destruction. and like i said before, the only thing being stolen or destroyed is the faked 'scarcity'.
The fabricated scarcity has no part in our free-market. It might have to do with lobbying, soft-monies and various other 'buzzwords' that otherwise mean bribes. but definately not free-market. so in essence napstarizing is actually in defense of 'free-market'. and no i'm not talking about 'free' as in 'free-beer' market. 'free' as in 'supply and demand unfettered establishing a fair price' market (among other things). And hence i fail to see how i need to 'educate' my kids (once i have 'em) they way MPAA and RIAA thinks i should educate them. And you can bet your hiney (not the beer, the posterior) that they won't be watching the propaganda cartoons. But of course i'm preaching to the choir here.
It isn't "piracy": that's armed robbery on the high seas. It isn't "stealing": that is permanently depriving a person of his property. It is copyright infringement, and those who do it may deserve to be sued, but they do not deserve to be imprisoned.
Note: "Copyright infringement is not theft" is not just my opinion. It is established precedent in the US legal system.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
This kind of reasoning (some would say rationalization) is exactly what the article wants to stamp out.
Without even stepping into the unresovlable argument of reasoning vs. rationalization, what alarms me about the article is its unquestioning advocacy of "educating" young computer users to think in a certain way that is to be determined by corporate interests. The question of whether widespread piracy is a moral blight is trivial compared to this article's radical advocacy of implanting corporate moral imperatives in our youth.
You have to grant that moral complexity plus promises of lotsa "free stuff" opens a big old doorway toward the rationalization of theft. Since the ownership of a bitstream is counter-intuitive, it won't be simple to have kids subscribe to the idea. But is the answer to this brainwashing kids into a "stealing is bad" moral reflex?
What kids need to be taught is logic and critical thinking, rather than receive drill in corporate-endorsed moral standards. While we may get just as much software piracy, we might hear some better rationalizations than those quoted in the article; and maybe the next generation will get copyright laws that make sense for the times.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Let's set the record straight
You can dislike illicit software copying if you like. You can think that the participants are morally suspect, you can say that it does harm to the industry...you can say quite a lot of things. But lets get something very clear here:
Comparing Software Piracy to theft is a stupid analogy!
Meriam Webter defines theft as
1 a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it
b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property
1)..When someone illegally copies a piece of software, a physical piece of merchandise that existed in a warehouse does not just magically disappear. Unlike in the real world, the proprieter of a business (Say COMPUSA, or MICROSOFT) does not have to spend extra money on recovering lost inventory.
2)..You can argue against it all you want, but the vast majority of pirated software on many people's PCs would not have been bought in the first place. I know there are exceptions, as always. But seriously, look at the Start menu on your average (artist I suppose since I went to school with art students)College Student's PC: Photoshop, Premiere, AfterEffects, Office, 3D STUDIO MAX, an assortment of expensive 3D games (Not to mention about 10 GB of Mp3s, which is a different but incredibly related discussion). Oh Good Lord, this one student has cost the industry thousands of dollars in software, and has cost the music industry nearly $2000-$3000 in revenue! What a load of carp. Apparently most people have forgotten that college students are poor!
Yeah, I suppose you could argue that through pirated software one is stealing profit--depriving the company of the profit it deserves. That is a dangerous argument to make. Because then how would you like it if a company had the right to sue you over persuading a fellow citizen that it would be unnecessary to even wrong to buy a specific product. Would that then mean that you have stolen what would have otherwise been a positive cashflow from said company? I think not. A corporation does not have the right to determine what a consumer should or would have done under their ideal circumstances. That right lies solely within an individual. If we want to crack down, lets crack down on real piracy, where a piracy group sells contraband copies of another person's material. That's what copyrights are all about in the first place.
Plus, Bill Gates really kind of needs to suck my wang, a little bit.
Little guy gets caught stealing: big fines and/or jail. Big guy gets caught stealing: 500 company lawyers issue a statement about how the companies actions are healthy competition and maximize shareholder value. Stock rises 10%. Company avoids punishment by generous donations of soft money to the Republicrat party. The law is so badly broken its a joke.
You don't actually believe that drivel, do you? The laws were written in order for those with more money to hire better lawyers to be able to stomp on those who can't afford expensive lawyers. If you don't want to live in this framework, maybe you should leave the country.
Mega corporations steal ideas all the time, and get away with it. The only time they don't is when they piss off another mega corporation who has enough money to hire competitive lawyers.
Some professors believe that "By the time we get them, they already believe it [piracy]'s right."
Of course that's what students believe! What student--what consumer--believes it's "right" to ask $600.00 for Adobe Photoshop, $400.00 for Office, or $1000.00 for Windows 2000 Server? If Adobe is going to be stupid enough to ask $600.00 for a copy of Photoshop, then they get what they deserve.
If Photoshop were only $20.00, then nearly everyone would purchase a legitimate copy because they would feel it was worth the money and (most importantly) they could actually afford it! What a concept!
There's also an interesting bit on how business software is now 1/3 pirated, down from 1/2 in 1995. In America, it's only 24%. From the way companies like Microsoft whine about piracy, I'd assumed the figures were increasing, not decreasing
It would be more enlightening to see validated statistics regarding the least pirated software. I bet it's those $10-per-CD discs of discount software you find on those display racks at places like Target and Kmart, due mostly to the reasonable pricing.
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
I totally fail to see why "youngster piracy", as in
some kids who couldn't afford buying it anyway sharing software,
would be a bad thing(tm).
The companies don't lose anything (not having the cash to buy
a legit copy, the kids would just do anything else), but they
gain market share, and therefore mindshare.
And their whining about people making copies of stuff that's no longer available legally is even more ridiculous.
Ideally, everyone would move to just Open Source Software and the problem would be eliminated; in a less-utopic
world, we need a revision of copyright law, and fast.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
I reckon that you'd have an easier time educating kids to swear off sex totally (except for procreation within marriage) than getting them to honour all forms of 'intellectual property'.
I argue here that the notion of intellectual property is not natural to humanity.
While animals relate easily to concepts of scarcity, one thing that distinguishes humanity is its capability to comprehend of abundance.
Human societies the world over have emerged from the caves by their ability and willingness to share information freely, and use this information to better their lives.
The notion of 'ownable intellectual property' was an artificial construct used initially to protect the incomes of publishers (who faced the large costs of typesetting and production), then was extended to generating an incentive for authors and providing them with a way to earn a living from the fruits of their creative labours.
However, to me, the 'intellectual property' system is clearly now serving the interests of the 'machine' far more than the interests of original creators.
How many masterpiece books actually make it into print? Many bestseller authors tell stories of their work being only accepted by the 30th publisher they approached. And even for those who find an outlet, they typically get screwed, receiving a miniscule percentage of the profit from their works.
And, it's the publishers and retailers who benefit far more from copyright than the original creators.
But with the advent of the Internet, I strongly feel it's now time to revise the whole notion of 'intellectual property'.
For the first time in human history, it's cheap, fast and easy to distribute information worldwide (anything that can be digitised - music, literature, art - perhaps even sculpture soon).
I strongly suggest that instead of trying to educate kids against 'piracy', we teach them to be innovative in finding new ways of profiting from their creativity in a new climate of abundance.
I would feel happiest with a system which limits copyright to the right of a creator to receive credit and acknowledgement for their work.
I feel that human society would thrive and evolve far better by setting the internet free, and encouraging everyone to participate in the new Abundance.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Stealing means depriving someone else of something which is rightfully his. It is not at all clear to me that the act which we miscall piracy involves that in any fashion. After the copying, the ``victim'' still has his program, which he may continue to peddle.
The ONLY justification for calling copying theft is the idea that each copy represents a lost sale. That's rediculously implausible. Further, we have to postulate that the ``victim'' has a right to a monopoly on sales which is violated by the copier. There may be such a legal privilege under our current law, and the copying may (or may not) infringe that privilege, but there can be no such right. Rights pre-exisit government, and we all have a right to build upon and otherwise make use of the IDEAS of others. Not their irreplaceable physical property, but their ideas, whichwe may share without depriving them of their use.
See what I've been reading.
For all your condescending posturing you still seem incapable of understanding his point. Arguing over how a dictionary defines a term is a piss poor way of debating a point and convincing anybody you have anything valid to say.
We *all* know why stealing is wrong. It deprives the victim of something that is "his".
Everything else, including the law, legal definitions and semantic origins of the word "steal" follow from THIS, not the other way around.
Go back, and argue about why copying information is illegal (and, optionally, morally wrong) w/o resorting to your lame pendantic handwringing over who can use merriamwebster.com faster.
The people ""pirating"" software are only causing financial damage if, and only if they would otherwise pay for the software. The percentage of people who would actually pay for ""pirated"" software is extremely low, not to mention much lower than 100%.
When stealing, you enrich yourself at the expense of someone else. When ""pirating"", you enrich yourself, period. At worst, you enrich yourself at the expense of a dubious incentive to create.
As shown by much research, the worst creative incentive is money. The best and most original creators were motivated by their own need of creation. Also, a free market will always generate required products, even be that free information. Assuming all software is free by enforced law, a company requiring software not yet available, will pay for its creation. A user requiring software will simply get the latest and greatest from Gnome, KDE, XFce, or the vast free collection that would exist had all software been enforced free. Development will be far more efficient, as the entire world's existing code base is reusable in your software components!
The vast majority of people I know ""pirate"".
They do so because they don't believe in paying high prices for artifical scarcity, and because they don't really value copyrights.
How are these not moral reasons?
Are these reasons selfish?
There are perfectly valid world and moral views that dismiss intellectual property as an immoral limitation on freedom, that does not encourage innovation, but rather reinventing the wheel every time as the original wheel is copyrighted.
Aritificial scarcity is not only impractical (as shown by the ease of ""pirating""), but also unhelpful and immoral.
If I make my living from writing software and people decide to "share" my work then I am no longer able to feed myself, run my business, or create new software.
If you do not pay me for my work, then "sharing" software is the same thing as the biggest kid in school getting everyone to "share" their lunch money with him.
The communists in China get the peasants to "share" their crops. As a result many peasants in China find themselves with nothing to eat.
How would you like it if I asked you to share your paycheck with me?
"Sharing" software that has not been released under a free license is stealing, period.
If you want something that you can share, write it yourself.
Not to say that Microsoft's lawyers haven't been getting out of line...
So you're saying that students should be allowed to share their papers?
Some say $50 is a fair value for a game. In some countries, this is enough money to feed a person for 3 months. How do you defend this price now?
You don't do your case much good with this sort of specious argument. The people buying computer games are not living on a $17/month food budget.
Just try to say that I'm doing something evil with that method.
They need to quit loading crippleware on cheap boxes.
A lady I know was mentioning that her PC came preloaded with a crippled version of Abobe Photoshop. After awhile it quit working on her and tells her she needs to upgrade to the current version.
When she found out how much it costs she said there was no way in hell she would spend more money on a paint program than what she spent on her computer!
So, she asked me if I could "obtain" a usable copy for her. Being "little people" that can'
t afford huge price tags like that just for playing around we feel no pangs of guilt downloading warez.
No big deal when it's just for private playing around. BUT, when you use it for profit or business that's a different story. I own a very small business and I BUY legit copies of the stuff I use. I DO downloaded and TRY the warez versions and when I decide that they WILL be used for my business I purchase them.
They need to get real on the prices. Make stuff afordable and more people will buy it. If Windows was $40 they would sell lots more copies.
If a BMW cost only $20.00, then everyone would purchase one, and the rate of theft of BMW's would drop to almost zero. That doesn't mean it makes business sense for BMW to do that.
First, this article makes me sick. The overwhelming corporate morality is obvious and in poor taste. People just should not get their values from the media. Values come from life experience, peer mentoring, and plain old critical thinking, not something like this.
What burns me even more is the reality that some people live in. If pieces like this actually are expected to sway people one way or the other, we should be more than a little scared. Popular opinion is just like popular music or popular anything --manufactured for those who just can't seem to think for themselves. This sort of thing is not what built this country, instead it is the source of the erosion we see today.
Toying around with some software to learn something about it, or the field of interest it is written for is not stealing. This act costs the authors nothing. The lost sales argument does not hold water either because only the rich or the foolish can afford to just buy software they are curious about. The rest of us are just not going to do that when there is no planned gain to be made. People normally do not invest when they do not see a return. Why would they?
As a kid this whole thing took a couple of days to sort out when I was presented with it the first time. It is simple. Learning is ok, profit is not, unless you are a paying customer. Pretty simple really.
As a result of that simple ethic, I have purchased every piece of software that I actually use to my benefit. Simple again, pay back what you owe.
Does this make me a thief? What harm does this cause the authors of the software I have learned about? The only harm I can think of happens when the software is lame, and I say something about it when asked. Paying for lame software is what started this whole thing anyway so in the end that does not hold much water either.
So this avaliabilty of software to all of us helps the authors much more than it harms. All of us who learn about software recommend it to employers and share knowledge and advocacy with our peers. There is a substantial longer term return for a very moderate investment on the part of the software authors.
Why should we bear the burden on this when we have very little return to show for it when the companies who profit from software sales have a clear one?
The structure of this is obvious. If things are slanted toward the established corporations it is much harder for new upstarts to have a chance at the top.
Return for investment works against us here where it should work for us above. Buying a few laws and maintaining a pile of lawyers is far cheaper than dealing with distruptve technologies once they are out of the bag.
Our loss is greater though. We lose out on choice innovation and in general the fruits that our contributions to society in general promise to bring.
How come nobody writes articles about these sort of things. Could it be structure again? Maybe those damn critical thinkers right or wrong are enough of an annoyance that it would be better to chill them before letting them speak?
Blogging because I can...
No. Thats the ten commandments. The Laws were made to promote a strong economy and control the people, keep the people in line, organized etc.
The political process is blocking us out, why do you think with almost 100 million people using napster, they couldnt stop a few thousand rich CEOs in the RIAA?
The law is setup based on whoever has the most money.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
This whole argument is wether or not making a program is making a product or selling a service. From the product point of view, copying a program is stealing. If everyone were to "Steal" from someone else then programers would starve.
From a service point of view copying after the job is done has no effect. The programer was paied in full for services renderd and the client is free to copy at will. Even if everyone who could were to coppy the program the programer can still eat.
The problem is that most companies bough into the product point of view and it would be expensive for them to change perspective. There are alot of managers, lawyers, and other people involved in selling product that are needed in s service industry. This suggests that the product paradigm is less efecent. Abandoning it woud require major restructuring of a company.
There is no perfect way to stop people from copying software. Software Copywright holders need to understand that it is not human nature to respect copywright. What they are doing in not effecent and causes all sorts of problems for them. Copywright Breakers need to remember, and Children need to learn that copying software can interfear with the way many people make a living.
Piracy MADE microsoft.
It's not the ethical scourge that many of the moral simpletons around here would have you believe.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
In other words, if I form a contract with a software provider or film company when I license software or content, and I break that contract by making a copy and passing it to another person, they should have the right to be able to sue me for damages. If the contract wasn't fair, the court will throw it out. If it was, they can make me pay up.
What is unacceptable, and an erosion of liberty, is that an unrelated third party - the police - can take action against me, on behalf of the state on this issue. Unless I was using this commercial transaction to commit another crime - like fraud, or murder - it should be nothing to do with them.
We rightly give the police tremendous leeway to detain suspects, confiscate goods and enter property. When this power is used on behalf of one party of a contract, it's very unfair. It's a dangerous extension of state and corporate power vs. the rights of individuals.
Breaking the terms of a software licence is neither "theft" nor "piracy". It's simply breaking the terms of a software licence, a bit of paper that comes in the box, written by the software company.
"Well, put a stake in my heart and drag me into sunlight."
If you want to get more specific, you might ask yourself: "How much is this software worth *to me*? If it is worth more to you than the selling price, then purchase it. Otherwise, you wouldn't purchase it anyway, so it would be perfectly moral to copy it from a friend.
Reality has a liberal bias
Photoshop is $600 for a reason. It's the best pixel pusher on the planet, and the price is well deserved. You don't need Photoshop. 90% of the people who use it (including people who pirate it) don't need Photoshop. If Adobe sold Photoshop for $20, that would be a lot like a certain company releasing a certain web browser for free.
I'm glad that Photoshop is $600, because there's already enough people who won't buy my software because they say "Sorry, but I already have Photoshop."
You don't need Photoshop, or half the shit people pirate. Pay for and use software you can afford. If people keep pirating Photoshop instead of buying cheaper alternatives, there won't be any more alternatives.
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
sharing : v. shared, sharing, shares
- To divide and parcel out in shares; apportion.
- To participate in, use, enjoy, or experience jointly or in turns. [emphasis mine]
</snip>Please stop spouting nonsense now. Your "definitions" are just as bogus as those of anyone else who tries to relate physical and intellectual concepts to further their own, generally flawed, arguments.
A word can paint a thousand pictures
Who cares what the tooth fairy or other farsical
beings might have to say about the issue?
In any case, what if someone demanded that if
you look at them, you pay them? If they walked
down the street, must people shell out money
in order not to be stealing? Your guideline
for what theft is is seriously broken.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
I used the example because I witnessed banks heavily marketing to her in a situation that could have been bad. Please tell me how a person with no income can afford to repay $10000 of credit card debt at 20% APR? What, they can't? Well, that's predatory lending by the lender. Some people I knew in college fell into the trap; namely, her roomate.
Do I think her roomate is blameless? No. Do I think it should be illegal? No. I'm just saying there's quite frequently irresponsible behavior on both sides of the equation. My heart doesn't bleed for the credit card companies who suffer bankruptcy losses because of their terrible lending policies, but neither does it for people who get themselves into that situation. As far as I'm concerned, they both get what they deserve.
If a drug dealer gives away samples for free to an unsuspecting child, is it completely the child's fault they get hooked on drugs and ruin their life? If a credit card companies loan sharks out to 18-year olds, who have never paid their way yet and can't possibly afford the loan they're given, is it completely the kid's fault if they get up to their ears in debt for the rest of their life?
I'm all for being responsible for your own actions-- don't get me wrong-- but knowing what dirty tricks some companies are up to is the best way to defend yourself. That's the big picture I'm talking about.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
They need to know that it's currently illegal, which is not the same thing as immoral.
They need to know that the ethical aspects of copying are highly controversial, and that words like ``piracy'' and ``intellectual property'' are nothing but propaganda terms used by people who hold a particular point of view about copying.
Lastly, they need to understand the consequences of getting caught.
Then they can make an informed decision whether or not to engage in copying, and on what scale.
Software can be copied infinatly with no extra cost.
Yes, but the cost to write the code can be millions of dollars. Unless you have some mechanism to recover the cost of writing the software, the programmer is going to find another line of work and you won't get any more software.
The software was handed to me ... not copied ... the person was upgrading and had no reason to keep around the old copy. I was so interested in computers that I would get hand me-downs ... I used a 486 until 1997 ...
So it's not always the spoiled brats ... it was the fact that A.) I didn't know at the time you could get software without buying it ... and B.) My father raised me to respect other peoples things and that stealing was wrong.
That did kinda wear off through highschool ... but hey :-)
SuperDuG
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Rubbish. Under this mode of thinking, Books would be sold by weight, or by the amount of pages, rather than the content of the book itself.
Face it. We sell ideas all the time. Books are one example. Art is another. When you buy a piece of art, are you suggesting that you are merely buying the the canvas, frame and paint? Of course not. It's monitary worth was based upon the fact that enough people liked how the various colors of paint were arranged on the canvas.
Even using your example of food. People frequent their favorite restaurant because that restaurant knows how to make it just the way they like it. It's not so much the ingredients, but the *idea* (manifest in this example as a "recipe") that makes the food valuable.
Where in the name did you study economics? Seriously, I'd love you to back this statement up with something more than a soundbite.
However, this is all about the economy, and rich CEOs making billions of dollars off of us. It doesnt really help the people, it helps just a few rich CEOs have a few more million dollars.
Hell, why limit this thinking to just SOFTWARE? I mean, those big, bad, CEO's run all sorts of companies. Next time I'm at the department store, I'll just SHOPLIFT whatever it is I need. And while we're at it, William Clay Ford makes far too much money so I'm just going to STEAL a shiny new Mustang GT.
Grow up. Software piracy is stealing. It hurts far more people than just CEO's and you are only fooling yourself if you think otherwise. How many industries would be absolutely destroyed if they suddenly had to deal with over 25 percent of their product being STOLEN? It would be capitalism's rendition of the apocalypse.
The people buying computer games are not living on a $17/month food budget.
No. But where I live the new copy of MS Office XP Standard costs more than two average monthly net wages. And this is a country that hopes to get into the European Union in the next few years, not some thirld-world country.
The people know very well that warez is illegal, there is no big need to educate them. But until the economy grows enough the piracy is unavoidable.
Using of the alternatives is normally not an option because of interoperability. When our premier minister meets Bill Gates and is excited about how much he is "donating" when he gives the schools the software for much less price, we can only expect that the open formats don't have much priority in our country... Hell, the media of the neighbour state called Gates "the father of the Internet"!
I'd like to point out that I really wanted to moderate today. But there are just too many fools who know lots about computers, less about society, and very little about the law posting mindless bits here.
Ever wonder why corporates and lawmakers look at open source like a bunch of freaks? Think about the guys who promote copyright infringment against corporations, and yet if Microsoft violates the GPL (a copyright infringement), they'd scream bloody murder.
Face it, we're all intellect workers here. I doubt many of us make a career out of building physical objects, or performing physical services. Most of use here either make or will make our careers of our using our minds. And we'd probably like to make money doing it so we can eat, stay warm, and buy more equipment.
The problem is that there are two camps. Those who say that all copying of software/music/etc costs money per copy. That's bullshit. The other camp says it doesn't hurt anybody. Well, tell that to the game companies who didn't make any money because you spent your $50 on blank CD-Rs instead of a single game.
The problem is that no one here thinks about who benefits and loses. People all over have become way too selfish. This counts the users, copiers, corps, etc. Look at the record companies! They want to control distribution of the music through their channels. But if I play the music enough online and get it to enough people, then the artist benefits because people go to the concerts, where t-shirt sales and such benefit the artist. However, what happens to the small record companies that DO promote their artists if they don't make money on the sales? Back when Windows 3.0/3.1 was making the warez scene, Microsoft was yet another competitor. Now they're a monopoly, in no small part thanks to those who wanted the software to be "free".
This isn't piracy. Piracy means we deprive people of what they have to trade. Maybe it's more of a conspiracy, since we all get toghether and affect companies in ways that in our own little world we don't see.
Let me just wrap up and say that your money votes and so do your actions. You can buy all the Linux software you want, but if you're still USING copies of the latest greatest Windows, you promote the monopoly. You may love a band to bits, but if you never contribute anything to them succeeding, you're a leech, not a fan. Why do the rules that we have in the IRC rooms and trading programs and such not apply when we interact with a world in which we can vote with ballots, purchases, and lobbying?
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
Copyright can't exist on a Capitalist country.
About capitalism:"under this system a minimum of government supervision is required; if competition is present, economic activity will be self-regulating"
Copyright is an artificial interference.
So capitalism don't work, what works is mixed economy.
Roman epire existed 500 years, but at last it collapsed.
So "capitalism works" is a rash conclusion if it can be take into account.
-= If you fight Dragons long enough, you will become a Dragon =-
I am a firm believer in the Henry David Thoreau's famous quote "That government is best which governs least", and further agree with him that
Make the ownership of software by businesses an entirely different thing than ownership for personal use. Impose hefty fines on businesses for piracy, but require software companies to make available - free of charge - any software sold to businesses (e.g. Adobe Photoshop, Word for Windows, AutoCAD, et. Al.) to the private consumer for personal use. This will have a positive effect for companies and individuals as follows:
1) The overall pool of knowledge will likely increase when it comes to business related tools, and companies will not have to hire expertise from other companies. For example, if an embedded systems company wants someone with vxWorks experience, they can expect to find a reasonable pool of people who have been using it at home, as they did not have to pay the multi-thousand dollar fee or work at a company that did in order to have access to it.
2) It will be practical to enforce multi-thousand dollar fines for piracy on businesses (who presumably have the money to pay the exorbanent prices) without threatening the lowly worker who may have had a hand in developing a product that generates millions, but certainly doesn't see very much of that themselves. Appropriate fines for piracy of software intended for home use may also be levied.
3) Patty Piracy will have a much easier time explaining to little Johnny why it's OK for her to have an unpaid for copy of Word on her machine, but not OK for little Johnny to pirate a game. The Game is software designed and marketed for home use, and so must be paid for by home users, while the word processor is designed and marketed for businesses, and so must be paid for by businesses.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
When I tell people about apt, they think I have some kind of software Napster. I learned this while demonstrating dselect to my wife's brother. He was unimpressed untill he learned that the authors of the software meant for me to have it, source and all for whatever purpose I saw fit. I was shocked as much by him thinking that I was "stealing" as I was by his acceptance of such theft. My sister's father in law thought much the same, though he was more dubious about copyright violations and expected me to be busted one day. The thought that I tried to impress was that there is no need for this "theft" as better free alternatives exist that will always be free and always be better. It's hard for them to see outside of the greed they are daily bombarded with.
The net result of the bombardment is that they think that they should not but that they must and will "steal". "Oh well, that's just normal business. Everybody would do it if they could." , is repeated over and over. They, however, feel as though there are no alternatives and that they must continue to do things they consider wrong untill M$ is kind to them and bundles what they want into their OS. Amazing isn't it? The greed is good folks are conditioning people to act immorally and accept immoral laws.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Almost every story here seems to be, "Waaaaaa! I can't get foo for free!!! Waaaaa!"
First, there is griping about the "broadband monopoly". Apparently, for $25/month, we are entitled to buy broadband when our usage will cost the company more then they will make. Strange, I know, but people here just don't get it - companies exist to make money. Apparently, if I'm the only person making a particular product, I'm obligated by "monopoly" to sell every version of it imaginable for the price that Slashdot thinks I should.
As for this software piracy, the real issue is that people don't want to pay for software. It isn't anymore complicated then that. They have very complicated justifications, but they don't want to pay for thier software. Fine, don't. But don't use it, either.
I think the biggest thing that could be done for open source software would be an enforcement of piracy law. Think about it - how many people would keep using Word at home if they had to pay for it? Don't you think that it might help some of the OSS word processors get market share? But, no, we're whining about how we should be able to use Windows and Word for free. Even the Slashdot community, who is supposed to be pro-OSS, seems to think that commercial software is better then the alternatives (at least for some things). If we don't believe what we preach (that OSS is best), then how can we expect others to?
After all, doesn't the music theft crowd believe that piracy increases the sales and populatiry of music? Why, then, would we pirate software on the moral grounds that the company doesn't deserve our money? Our piracy may contribute to the company's bottom line.
Strange, all the CEOs I've seen lead companies into bankruptcy have come out of it with millions of dollars. That's the whole "golden parachute" they talk about.
John Roth, ex-CEO of Nortel got a retirement package (not of stock) that was worth millions, during the layoffs of aproximately half his workforce (~45k layoffs) and a claimed loss of 19.2*Billion* in one quarter.
What's-his-name, from Rambus. He cashed in and sold a bunch of his stock just after their stock skyrocketed when they started suing everyone. Now the stock is in the toilet but he'll never have to repay anything. (Ha! Investors in a company like that deserve to lose their money.)
There are thousands of examples. CEOs getting huge bonuses in years that companies are laying off staff like crazy. (Soon before bankruptcy, not like they were just pruning an unneeded workforce.)
Seems to me like the least risky place to be is at the top. The low-level employees have virtually no employment protection, the upper-levels have secure jobs. The low-levels don't get paid well, the upper-levels do. etc.
I'd really like to bite the bullet the way CEOs do. That'd be the $20-Million bullet. Oh, terrible life.
Y'know, the brainwashing you suffered is having nasty side-effects. It's leading to you posting semi-intelligible messages on public webpages.
Your lord god semi-mighty seems to agree with the "informating wants to be free" crowd.
Remember Mana? Food from the heavens. Your bible claims your god decided that feeding the starving people was the proper thing. He didn't care that Mana-fed people wouldn't be supporting the food-sellers.
It's similar now. We can see how mana-type foods might be possible in a few years. But they'd never be used to feed the poor, those people can't pay for them. Instead we'd use them to feed cattle to produce steak and hamburgers.
I'm afraid your hippie god wouldn't agree with this. He'd want to **STEAL** that intellectual property from the good mega-corps and distribute it to all those filthy **THIEVES**. (read: starving people)
btw, you're misusing the word "Steal" which is defined as the act of "Theft" which is defined as depriving the original owner of his property.
Making copies of something does not qualify as theft. Use the correct term "Unlawful copying".
I think a slightly revised selling system could
totally CRUSH piracy. We all know how nice it is to have pretty books, and tech support, and such, but often times the user doesn't want that stuff, and they just want to be able to install the program and use it. They don't want to pay for tech support that they aren't going to use. Why can't software companies sell downloads of ISO's for a fraction of the cost of the retail version of thier software, but ISO users would be barred from tech support and such. They would be still making thier money, and they would be selling directly to thier customers, and a substantial savings to the customer. Retail stores make HUGE markups just because they can, why can't the software companies sell the isos below the wholesale price of thier products? I would never pirate software again, methinks.
Spring is here. Don't believe me, look outside!
Take caution with the brainwashing there. One can use this argument to "borrow" someone's car if one intends to return it after use. Also, there's a fairly solid argument that at least some percentage of people using warez would buy the program if they didn't have access to it for free. So, theft of use is indeed different from theft of goods, but there are still ethical parallels to be considered.
Virg
I've been waiting for someone to come up with the Robin Hood metaphor, because on the surface it seems to apply to the situation, but in this circumstance it's a horribly skewed fit, and here's why.
1.) You didn't steal the software from Sheriff, you bought it, and in so doing, you agreed to the terms of the license. If you're going to steal, then by God, steal.
2.) Since when is there a God-given right to play the newest games? The Sheriff of Nottingham was taxing people to the point of starvation. Geek jokes notwithstanding, I've never seen anyone die of a Quake deficiency.
3.) There are free software packages available all over the 'Net, including games if that's your poison. It's not necessary to pirate to use any of them. And before you say, "there's no (insert name of newest game here) available free," I'll ask you to reread article 2.
4.) What the MPAA and RIAA do wrong doesn't make what you do wrong morally right, because they aren't forcing you to do anything in the first place. Again, to go back to the Robin Hood motif, the poor couldn't choose not to pay their taxes. You (and your poor friend) can choose not to play game X without serious injury.
In short, if you feel like sticking it to the Man, then do so, but don't try to bend the rationalization around so that I'll se your actions as morally justified. What you're doing isn't civil disobedience. It's just copyright infringement.
Virg
> Big corporations are always screwing over the little guy, with their
> fine print, bait & switch tactics, political donations, advocacy advertising,
> EULAs, whatever. Why is it OK for them and not for me?
Well, it's not okay. For either of you. Whether or not they deserve to be screwed, you screwing them is still unethical. That said, them screwing you is also unethical.
Get it now? Carry on.
Virg
FWIW, copyright lasts a bit longer than 75 years thanks to the Sonny Bono Act.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
You are incorrect.
Sharing works as you describe, if you have a physical item which your friend wishes to use in privacy.
If I buy a piece of art I can share it with all of my friends who wish to come over and view it. If I buy a tree, any number can come over and smell the flowers on it.
If I buy a music CD, many friends can come over and listen to it at once.
What's the big difference between making them a copy so that they listen to it at a different location? It's much the same as calling them, while it is playing, and letting them listen via telephone.
BTW, on that licensing thing... wrong again. You don't need to be licensed to use a book or CD. Use of the product is covered in copyright law, the licenses you see (EULAs) are post-sale and have no legal weight. (Copyright law even allows temporary copies that are required to use the work, such as copies of software in RAM.)
Using of the alternatives is normally not an option because of interoperability.
This is interesting - are you saying that pirated versions of Windows are the defacto standard OS in your country? And people keep on pirating Windows because of interoperability issues?
If this is the case, the whole country would probably benefit from a piracy crackdown, as it would force everyone to switch away from proprietary standards to a more economically sustainable model.
Hell, the media of the neighbour state called Gates "the father of the Internet"!
That makes me want to throw up. My father was a program manager at DARPA, and knew Larry Roberts personally.
Shareholders only deserve respect if they don't invest in crooked companies.
..."
I've heard people on here say this of MS and Rambus both... "I know they did something illegal, but I hope they get off because I dumped $20k into their stock
IMHO if you know (or should, by following general industry news) that the company you're investing in is involved in illegal actions (MS's handling of DR Dos, Rambus's illegal claims to have patented DRAM, etc) then you deserve to be treated like a criminal. If you *only* lose your money, thank your lucky stars you were tossed in prison for theft and conspiracy.
Some thing people don't know about, like, was it ConEd in that Erin Brokovich? Many of their execs didn't know they were poisoning people, let alone shareholders.
However, with Rambus, people knew (it had been reported in a few large magazines) that the company had lied to JEDEC and obtained patents under false pretenses. They rushed out to buy stock anyway. These are the scummy ones.
Who said you purchased it? When you lease a car - hell, when you finance a car - is it yours? It's tangible. It's real. It still belongs to somebody else, based on a contract you agreed to.
As evil as it has become, software is distributed in the same manner. You pay for a license and agree to the terms. If you don't, return to store where purchased. Legality of shrink-wrap and click-through licensing notwithstanding, you know damn well how to read.
I can't remember the last EULA I read that didn't say, in effect, this software is licensed, not sold. Now, as much as I hate this idea and wish it was replaced with true ownership, I understand the basic intent.
And for all the other "it's not stealing, merely sharing" types: If you take, use, or consume something you don't have permission to, it's WRONG! You might be able to rationalise that H-card or XP ISO as civil disobedience, but it's still wrong. Period.
GTRacer
- Now is it wrong to format-shift OST's I own to MP3 using Grokster? Hmmm...
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
My argument was not that a specific type of sharing is okay thus all should be. It was that sharing can take many forms. As such, your "that's not sharing" statement was a little inaccurate.
Thus, we should be careful who we let set the definitions of sharing or we wouldn't be able to have friends over while playing a CD.
While I think that creators of a work should have control over all commercial distribution (and almost all non-commercial) I don't think they should have control over the use of the item.
If you let content creators (or creators of physical items) dictate how their creations are used you end up in a world where you'd be violating your purchase "agreement" by hauling Ford parts in a GM truck and so on. Perhaps where it was only permitted to watch a movie if you wouldn't give a bad review, etc. These are powers that I don't think creators should have. After sale I think all usage rights should go to the buyer.
I actually support copyright almost as it is now. If you'd chop the term down (I think 30 years, or life + 10 would be good) and strike down things like the DMCA, I'd be 100% behind it.
What I do not support is controls on personal copying (backups), space shifting, time shifting, usage controls (region codes, etc) and the like. I think that once a person buys it they should be free to do pretty well everything except distribute copies.
I do disagree with your statement "If you don't agree with the creator or his stipulations of use, then don't use the product, get it from someone else or do it yourself." There are too many times that this could be abused. This is why I think the law should set blanket permissions for all creative works. I don't want to have to keep from publishing a bad review of an MS product just because I need to use Word and that's part of the word EULA.
Those restrictions a creator would want would often be contrary to the interests of society.
When you look at some of the accidental and deliberate abuse of piracy over the years, it's pretty clear we are totally unprepared for such a huge change in mindset.
M$ allowed huge amounts of piracy of their software, as it gave them a big market share, and in the long run, allowing that piracy will probably make them a lot of money. The record companies can't let go of the old technology, and wonder why people are so angry about paying the same price twice, for a CD that's scratched. Isn't part of the money for the license? not the media?
When a discussion is about the price of CDs, it's all about incorporating the license fee into the media... but when it's about getting a discount on a replacement or duplicate media (CD version of your old LP), then it's all about the media and distribution...
M$ still hasn't come across the big rebellion against them, and won't unless they start cracking down on piracy... but when they do, people are going to be pissed off, and retaliate... unfair? well if you allow piracy some days, and not on others, you're inviting people to be pissed at you...
Too many big companies have lied to their customers about many things, so it's asking a lot for them to respect their rights, when the companies don't respect their customers.
Disgusting ethics breeds disgusting ethics...
you can't have it both ways...
It's a bitch when Karma bites back
When did you start buying software? When's the first time you personally saw a license agreement? You're a /. reader. You seem very concerned about this issue. Therefore, you must, at some point, developed an expectation that some (if not all) software was licensed!
That 'by clicking here' or 'by using the software' doesn't cut it for me to constitute an agreement.
Unfortunately, for the time being, it does. Nobody made you go to CompUSA and pick up a box. Nobody tricked you. You sought out the software.
Music, movies, and books do not come with license agreements. I think if anyone tried that, they would quickly be laughed at and raise public outrage.
Please forgive my scepticism, but where the hell have you been? What do you think RIAA and MPAA are trying to do with all their "copy" controls? They are trying to push consumers to accept pay-for-play in the name of Honesty and the Defeat of Piracy. And their Stock Options...
Don't get me wrong...I think the license agreement should be designed around the concept of ownership. My ideal license agreement would say that the software/music/video/etc. is mine and I can format- and device-shift to my heart's content. But I have no right to distribute beyond limited # of copies in a home setting.
GTRacer
- All this talk about IP and now I have to...
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
Ah, but you see, the ability to make money from the sale of a product is not an inaliable right
If you are basing a business on the sales of a product that can be easily duplicated, with no loss to any of the parties involved and at minimal cost to the parties involved, then your business model is based on a false assumption.
The sales model of the market depends on scarcity of the product. Once written, that is not true of software (or indeed, anything digital) It's like trying to sell air.
The for-sale model of a software business is fundimentally broken. It depends on a legal definition to support it. It makes as much sense as a law requiring that a buggy whip be sold with the purchase of every car (can't let that newfangled horseless carriage bankrupt the buggy whip industry!)
This is a done deal. The genie is out of the bottle, and all the legislation and propeganda in the world can't possibly stuff it back in.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
You see, that wouldn't have happened if Netscape and Spyglass hadn't been crushed by trying to make money. MS used their monopoly to change the rules of the market.
And yes, Photoshop LE does rock (I assume they renamed that to Elements, they were selling it standalone for a while). But people will keep buying/pirating Photoshop, using the same logic they use to buy SUVs to commute.
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.