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Why the BSA Is Less Reviled Than the RIAA
Hugh Pickens writes "The Business Software Alliance (BSA) is a trade group established in 1988 representing a number of the world's largest software makers whose principal activity is trying to stop copyright infringement of software produced by its members, performing roughly the same function for the software industry that the RIAA performs for the music industry. Yet, as Bill Patry, author of a 7-volume treatise on US copyright law and currently Senior Copyright Counsel at Google, notes on his blog the BSA is a 'far less unpopular organization' than the RIAA because there are three key differences between the BSA's campaigns and the RIAA's. First, BSA's members have always offered their products for sale to the public, through any channel that wants to sell them. Second, BSA's members are consumer-oriented; they try to develop products that respond to consumers' needs, and not, the reverse: focusing on what they want to sell to consumers. Third, because consumers can easily purchase BSA's members products, those who copy without paying are simply scofflaws. 'I think the fact that the public does not object to BSA's campaign proves my point [that]... people do not want things for free; they are willing to pay for them,' writes Patry. 'It should not be surprising that when consumers are not treated with respect, they react negatively. That's something the software industry learned long ago, and that's why people don't object to the BSA's enforcement campaign.'"
why not though?
I've bought every album dream theater has made, and I know full well I could torrent them instead.
Why should I give a fuck if they prosecute someone for taking for free what I handed over hard earned money for?
If I support the band enough to buy their stuff, why should I acre about people trying to rip the band off?
Are you not fussed if everyone in your town cheats on their income tax?
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
You have a point about XP32 being limited there, but what about the applications?
If those are 32 bit, they will still be limited to 2 GB per app even if they run on a 64 bit OS. So more RAM won't help much on legacy apps (if they need that much in the first place). So if you switch to 64 bit, you might end up buying new application licenses anyway.
At this point, re-evaluating if it really needs to be Windows seems worth a try. You still may find out that Linux does not match your needs, but the switch to 64 bit seems an opportunity to look at the alternatives.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Sure you can have lots of RAM for quite cheap, but most people won't ever need that much RAM.
Yeah no one will ever need that much RAM, 640K ought to be enough for anybody.