1. Copying, distributing, sharing, and pirating are examples of violations of software license agreements.
2. Violating a software license agreement is a federal crime under the DCMA.
Therefore:
It's a federal crime not to comply with arbitrary regulations imposed by corporations concerning the use of their products.
The regulations corporations weave into their license agreements are not approved by the citizens of this country and can be changed and reworked and made obscure as the software company pleases. This completely bypasses the kind of representative government that was constructed to prevent large interests from overriding the will of the citizenship. This is wrong.
Copyright law specifically protects the rights of an author to sell, distribute, package, modify, and redistribute *their work* as they wish. The spirit of the law is clearly to protect authors from attacks on their work by competing parties who wish to claim the work of someone else as their own. However, corporations write this out of the contracts they sign with their employees, making everything that their employees produce the property not of the employees -- the authors -- but of the corporation. This completely bypasses the protections that copyright law was designed to protect, ripping out of the hands of the software authors the power to control how their work is handled. This is wrong.
Copying software to share with my friends, copying my friends' software to use on my computer, and distributing software applications and MP3s via file-trading networks is not "theft." It is a violation of the rights of the software's author to control the dissemination of his or her work. However, these rights have been signed over to the software company in a complete adulteration of the spirit of copyright law. The author has already been exploited; redistribution of software in violation of a license agreement is only further exploitation of the original author. Think Adam Hinkley and Hotline Communicatons. This, too, is wrong.
Unfortunately, the law itself is what is responsible for all of this confusion. It enables the exploitation of software authors despite specific protections it was constructed to provide. Yet it prohibits the further exploitation of those products in the name of protecting a corporation. It protects corporations against "software theft"... but it does nothing to protect the software authors themselves. This, in a very powerful way, is wrong.
Of course, the easy answer is, well, that the software authors -- the programmers themselves -- shouldn't sign the contracts that fork over the lifetime rights of their work to their employer. But we all know that's a ridiculous solution to the problem, because it only further supports the power of corporations to exploit their workers. The more complex answer is to steal the products of the corporation to perhaps hurt the corporation and bring about its demise. But again, we all know that this is a ridiculous solution because the corporations will survive and thrive as long as there are people willing to fork over their rights for the sake of feeding their children. This is the catch-22 that causes the vast amount of tension between each side of this issue.
The ultimate solution would, of course, be a true Marxist society. I would guess even that a truly democratic society would dissolve the disputes. However, the fact remains: as long as our society exists to protect the rights of each citizen to live, work, and pursue happiness, creators and exploiters will be at mortal odds. What will therefore continue to rage is a battle between two huge segments of our culture: those who believe in the rights of human beings to support themselves, and those who believe in the rights of corporations to exist as fleshless citizens.
Ought we violate software license agreements? Surely not. Might we violate software license agreements? Surely.
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1. Copying, distributing, sharing, and pirating are examples of violations of software license agreements.
... but it does nothing to protect the software authors themselves. This, in a very powerful way, is wrong.
2. Violating a software license agreement is a federal crime under the DCMA.
Therefore:
It's a federal crime not to comply with arbitrary regulations imposed by corporations concerning the use of their products.
The regulations corporations weave into their license agreements are not approved by the citizens of this country and can be changed and reworked and made obscure as the software company pleases. This completely bypasses the kind of representative government that was constructed to prevent large interests from overriding the will of the citizenship. This is wrong.
Copyright law specifically protects the rights of an author to sell, distribute, package, modify, and redistribute *their work* as they wish. The spirit of the law is clearly to protect authors from attacks on their work by competing parties who wish to claim the work of someone else as their own. However, corporations write this out of the contracts they sign with their employees, making everything that their employees produce the property not of the employees -- the authors -- but of the corporation. This completely bypasses the protections that copyright law was designed to protect, ripping out of the hands of the software authors the power to control how their work is handled. This is wrong.
Copying software to share with my friends, copying my friends' software to use on my computer, and distributing software applications and MP3s via file-trading networks is not "theft." It is a violation of the rights of the software's author to control the dissemination of his or her work. However, these rights have been signed over to the software company in a complete adulteration of the spirit of copyright law. The author has already been exploited; redistribution of software in violation of a license agreement is only further exploitation of the original author. Think Adam Hinkley and Hotline Communicatons. This, too, is wrong.
Unfortunately, the law itself is what is responsible for all of this confusion. It enables the exploitation of software authors despite specific protections it was constructed to provide. Yet it prohibits the further exploitation of those products in the name of protecting a corporation. It protects corporations against "software theft"
Of course, the easy answer is, well, that the software authors -- the programmers themselves -- shouldn't sign the contracts that fork over the lifetime rights of their work to their employer. But we all know that's a ridiculous solution to the problem, because it only further supports the power of corporations to exploit their workers. The more complex answer is to steal the products of the corporation to perhaps hurt the corporation and bring about its demise. But again, we all know that this is a ridiculous solution because the corporations will survive and thrive as long as there are people willing to fork over their rights for the sake of feeding their children. This is the catch-22 that causes the vast amount of tension between each side of this issue.
The ultimate solution would, of course, be a true Marxist society. I would guess even that a truly democratic society would dissolve the disputes. However, the fact remains: as long as our society exists to protect the rights of each citizen to live, work, and pursue happiness, creators and exploiters will be at mortal odds. What will therefore continue to rage is a battle between two huge segments of our culture: those who believe in the rights of human beings to support themselves, and those who believe in the rights of corporations to exist as fleshless citizens.
Ought we violate software license agreements? Surely not. Might we violate software license agreements? Surely.
j