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Talk To a Convicted Warez Guy
Chris Tresco is one of those evil "software pirates" cybermoms warn you about. He was a sysadmin at MIT, and also a member of "the secretive Internet software trading ring known as 'DrinkOrDie'" who got caught by the DoJ's Operation Buccaneer, got convicted, and was sentenced to 33 months in prison on August 16. Chris has a little time left on the outside before he goes away and has agreed to spend some of it answering your questions, so ask away. (Usual Slashdot interview rules.)
Since you got more time than the average rapist, do you wish you'd raped someone instead of 'pirating' software?
Blue Byte released an amazing game called "Incubation: Time Is Running Out," which sold moderately well...but not enough to cover their original expenditure on the product. They then released an expansion pack, "Incubation: The Wilderness Missions," which was the first product ever to use SafeDisc. The mission pack outsold the original game by 1.5x.
How can you justify piracy when so few titles break even on their development costs?
RomSteady - I came, I saw, I tested. GamerTag: RomSteady / http://www.romsteady.net
I call logical fallacy on you. Shame, shame.
Take the syllogism: "All New Yorkers must be Americans."
(So are you saying that if you're not from
New York, you're not from America?)
Given that the guy's an MIT student, we can safely assume with a reasonable degree of assurance that he's a smart cookie.
"All MIT students are smart enough to understand the consequences of illegal actions. He was an MIT student. Therefore, he's smart enough to understand the consequences."
The contraverse is not neccessarily true. Don't twist his logic like that. It fails.
Come on, the same people that pirate Photoshop also pirate $30 shareware products.
Hell, one of the most requested serial numbers requested (in a mac channel) is the sn# for Ircle, the shareware client most apple users use that has a 30 day limit.
However, the ppl that pirate warez rarely use the products for more than a week (unless it's a game), if in most cases, use them for non-commercial purposes since businesses usually need to be legit.
Personally, I don't see warez as a huge financial problem for *large* software companies. The people that use them are small-time users who would never be able to afford them, they build a userbase of people that use their products for corporations (that pay for lots of licenses), and retain the marketshare of the product (adobe/quark), (office/claris/openoffice), etc.
I fail to see a justification in stealing something becuase you feel the price is too high. Only in this industry does that mode of thinking seem to carry any weight.
Well, in this industry the cost of duplication is zero. I'm not defending software "pirates", but I wish people would stop equating copying bits on a hard disk to theft of physical goods.
Are you going to a minimum security prison? A federal Prison? Will you be with white collar criminals (let's hope you do) or will you be with "real" criminals...you know, thieves, rapists, etc.
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
The answer is a resounding NO. If you rebroadcast their material, substituting your own ads, you have profited by infringing copyright. Motive in copyright infringment cases is very, very important. If you do not profit from infringement, the violation is not as serious as if you gain profit. Additionally, profitting from copyright infringement leaves you liable for damages equal to or greater than the profit you gained by infringing someone else's copyright.
It's not theft. It is copyright infringement. They are two dramatically different things, although the major software and media companies would have you believe otherwise.
Again, you are incorrect. If you produce goods similar to, or in many cases as identical to (in any case where patent, trademark, or copyright do not apply), someone else's and place your own trademark upon it, you have done nothing wrong. If, however, you place another's trademark upon it (implying that it was produced by the other manufacturer), you are guilty of trademark infringement. Alternatively, if you use a patented invention and do not pay patents to the patentor, you are liable for patent infringement claims. Similarly, if you duplicate a copyright work, you are not guilty of stealing from the author; you are guilty of infringing upon his right to control copying of his work.
The only reasons one could proffer the arguments above, that I can see, is 1) simply lack of education regarding U.S. law. I am not a lawyer, but I do believe I have a sound understanding of laws where they affect my day-to-day life. There are also 2) those paid to have that viewpoint. Hilary Rosen and others are paid part to promote these views of copyright infringement as theft. To promote an alternative view disagrees with the corporate agenda, and this disagreement would most likely eliminate their sources of income.
The fundamental problem with the thinking comes about because of the nature of what we're dealing with. Information is trivially reproduced, even when spoken. I suggest you study the history of copyright, to fully understand the nature of the laws. Today, we have a society where such information can be reproduced for (effectively) free. It's my personal opinion that Copyright is a doomed concept. However, we have not come up with a suitable reward yet for authorship to promote the science and arts that is not Copyright. Until we do, we will be stuck with this system that so obviously maps so poorly to reality.
There are certainly cases where the line between copyright infringement and theft is very blurred. For instance, if one breaks into a computer system and makes copies of information that were never intended to be made public. One has obviously violated copyright in that case, since U.S. law regards all authorship as copyrighted. Is it theft? In that case, I don't know; just as "breaking and entering" is considered "breaking and entering" (vandalism and trespass, if you prefer), if you don't steal anything for entering, but instead copy important documents, you've not stolen the documents, but made copies in violation of the wishes and reasonable expectation of the holder. The company or individual never intended to release the information to the public for profit (the point of copyright), the information was reasonably expected to remain private, and consent for this action was implicitly denied. In that regard, information violation seems more analogous to rape than theft: one has expressly violated the wishes of the holder of the information, taken nothing from them, but used them in a way inconsistent with their will. Copyright infringement on released goods, however, is similar to using a hooker for her intended purpose, but refusing to pay her. One has no implied contract, the other does. The penalties for rape are spelled out in the law, and include government-sanctioned prison time. The penalties for not paying your prostitute are the same as for not paying any service person: if your bill is not paid, you are sent to a collection agency, which then may take you to court to seek damages. It is (often) not treated the same as theft, since the "goods" (a service) are intangible, you have not deprived anyone of anything except time invested (which has value, but is again intangible and cannot be stolen) and potential profits. In some cases, particularly where the one infringed upon believes the intent was to defraud (once again, fraud law, not theft), they may seek criminal remedies. Most don't, though, because by so doing they are depriving themselves of a potential customer, getting bad press, and preventing the infringer from quickly paying the damages by depriving him/her of income.
Note that the paragraph above is entirely my opinion, and not really part of my initial refutation. I simply think that most software companies and authors would do well to remember that they simply sell their time for money. Their "product" is a service, and our current model of copyright attempts to treat information as a tangible good, which it is not. Those prepared to acknowledge this fact (as Microsoft seems to be doing with their license renewal services) will probably do OK as the economy transforms to take advantage of new realities. Those who insist on treating intangible as tangible will eventually go out of business as realists (the customers) begin to treat it as the intangible, inherently value-less thing it is.
A few links for you to peruse:
Fundamentally, it's a thorny issue with a whole lot of ramifications. Those who attempt to cast copyright infringement as a black and white case of theft are intentionally misleading you as to what is going on. It is its own legal domain with its own remedies and penalties, entirely aside from traditional laws regarding property theft. There is no such thing as "intellectual property": there are patents, trademarks, and copyrights which give rights to works based upon a well-established but sorely broken legal framework.
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
Many people wish to say something like "We can't favor one person's morality over the other" without accepting the full implications of that statement. Namely, if each person gets to decide right and wrong, then we lose the ability to judge any action as wrong, no matter how horrific.
That said, I don't pretend to have all the right answers about which things under which circumstances are right, wrong, and optional. But until someone convinces me otherwise, I am going to assume that the categories exist, and do my best to figure out what things go into which.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
The key to any moral system is recognizing that people have different moral values, that those differences can be legitimate, but still being able to make value judgments regarding which action is correct for a particular situation. Any hard and fast rule will cause problems, but the recognition that people live differently is not the same as total moral relativism.
Ceci n'est pas un post