Re: OMG!

["**** ****" <***@***.com>]

Jeff Blakeney wrote in message

>Okay, fine. You can't seem to grasp the simple fact that if you
>increase the number of copies that exist of someone's copyrighted work
>without the copyright holder benefitting in any way from those extra
>copies, then the copyright holder is losing money.  This is my last
>post about this because you either don't get it or don't want to.



I don't get it. I'm not sure that there is anything to "get". What you're
saying is this...
When I hypothetically pirate a piece of software, money is deducted from the
author's bank account? Who deducts it? Do they always get it right, or do
they sometimes deduct too much?

In any sense of the term, they do not lose money. Losing money means this...
you have a certain sum of money, either in cash or invested (money still, if
in an abstract form), and after a certain event or action, they have less
money than they did before. This is obvious people.

Now, if they spend money producing a physical item... a sculpture, a house,
a custom car, with the intent to sell it at profit, and someone steals it,
or vandalizes it to the point that it is totaled, this is "losing money".
They invested money, and that money is forever unrecoverable. They lost
money because someone deprived them of ever selling it at profit. Not
because the criminal actually gained. (Depending on what he did, he may not
have).

On the other hand, a person can invest money in authoring software. There
are real costs associated with producing it, and on top of that, there is
the author's time. A professional programmer's time is highly valued, I
would say. So, when he is ready to sell this software, it can be sold to
multiple persons simultaneously. When you do that with physical stuff, it
usually means you are a scam artist. Now, when he sells it to people (should
I say license?), he is earning back the money/time he invested, and
hopefully at a profit. At least hopefully for the good programmers, I'd like
to see them encouraged. But he is in a position that the vendor of physical
stuff isn't. With very rare exceptions, no thief or vandal can deprive him
of selling his software. Those that do pirate his software, were almost
certainly never potential customers. The customers that he counted on,
before embarking on the endeavor, will still pay. They get support, they get
manuals, lots of benefits that warez kiddies just can't pirate. He is not
losing money.

But let's consider this a bit more. Suppose that every single potential
customer, no matter the probability of them buying, is counted on, when
producing the software. And any event or action that dissuades them from
buying (such as them getting a free pirated copy) is considered a loss. Now,
warez kiddies cause vendors to lose money. But the same can be said of
critical reviews. If I convince a friend not to buy something, because it is
poorly written, am I not causing them just as much loss as the software
pirate does? Is this immoral too? It just doesn't hold up.

There might be need of IP law, I am still undecided. But the current
implementation of it sucks, REALLY SUCKS, and you attempting to justify it
with this bull*** is disgusting.

John