Re: A2 Trade/Swap ... site ...

[pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <Pine.LNX.3.96.1000710161333.4223B-100000@step.mother.com>,
Sandra Warnken  <warnken@mother.com> wrote:
 
> Paul Schlyter wrote
> 
>> Of course -- and large-scale piracy of commercially valuable software
>> will most likely land you in jail.
>>  
>> But do you REALLY think that "piracy" of obsolete software which lost
>> its commercial value decades ago will land you in jail?  Possibly if
>> the copyright owner is an individual who is very jealous about his
>> software and perhaps even a little lunatic, so he does all he can
>> (including paying expensive lawyers) to get you sentenced.  But
>> hardly if the copyright holder is Apple Computer, who is fully busy
>> making money on modern systems, and who would refuse to sell you a
>> copy even if you asked.
>  
> What happened to Mircrosoft's interest in ebay.  They estimated some large
> percentage of software sold on that site was pirated.  I can't imagine the
> cost of trying to track down every single seller that would go through
> ebay and trying them in court.  The cost in lost revenues must be quite
> large.
 
Oh, poor poor Bill Gates.  Will this force him to beg in the streets
and sleep under bridges?  (sob sob)    <evil grin>
 
You should have picked a better example.  Bill Gates is probably
donating much more money to charity than he loses on piracy on ebay.
Why does Bill Gates donate so much to charity?  Because he wants to
remove the image of himself as a greedy person -- an image he's had
all since those days in the 70'ies in the Homebrew Computer Club,
where everyone swapped software with everyone else and took for
granted that's the way it should be.  Everyone except Bill Gates, who
protested violently when his Basic interpreter got swapped.  Needless
to say, Gates soon left the Homebrew Computer Club.
 
Microsoft can easily afford some piracy among hobbyists, like what's
maybe happening on ebay.  But there are many other, much smaller,
companies, who are much more vulnerable to piracy.  They need this
protection much better - so you should have picked such an example
instead.
 
> I don't think the issue is so much about violating copywrites of
> softare for obsolete computers, but about violating the copywrites of
> live software authors still producing for those computers.
 
Here I fully agree.
 
> Where do you draw the line?
 
I once saw someone else draw a line here, which I found pretty sensible:
if the software has been for sale somewhere during the last 5 years,
you should either buy it, or leave it alone.
 
> How do you know if someone doesn't care, if you don't ask.
 
You don't, of course - so obviously the best thing is to ask.
 
But sometimes you cannot ask, because the copyright holder is either
a person you cannot locate, or some company which no longer is in
business.  How do you ask in such a case?  You can't, right?  So
you'll have to guess.  And it's a quite reasonable guess that a
piece of software which is for sale nowhere, and hasn't been for
5 years or more, that such a piece of software no longer has any
commercial value (if it had, someone would sell it).
 
But OK, the software piece may have no commercial value but the
author may still wish to not have it copied for purely emotional
reasons of some kind.  If so, I think the author should make himself
visible, so people can reach him.  He could for instance post now and
then in CSA2, or some related newsgroup.
 
Finally -- if you read a good book and want your friends to read it,
you borrow them your book, right?  Why don't you first contact the
author of the book, to find out whether he thinks it's OK, or whether
he wants your friends to buy their own copy of the book?  If your
friends borrow your book instead of buying their own copy, the author
loses some royalties because fewer copies of the book is sold, right?
Do you really think this is OK?  It may be legal, but is it morally OK?
 
> I wrote a piece in the GSAUG newsletter about Turley donating a hard drive
> to Ground.  That was edited from my article. The old timers in the club -
> all now gone on to the Mac - informed me that Turley is a %$%&^$#@* son
> of a gun for pirating GS software that was new on the market. They will
> not allow any mention of him in our newsletter.  They feel that it's
> tantamount to condoning what he did.  He's never been charged or gone to
> trial, but he's been found guilty by the folks concerned most directly.
> As I understand their belief he shortened the useful life of the
> GS. I can understand all the brouhaha going on around him.  Jeff's concern
> is justified if people here are so casual about violating copywrite.
 
If so, he must have been pirating software which still was being
sold.  And then he did violate the "If the software has been for sale
somewhere during the last 5 years, you should either buy it, or leave
it alone" rule.
 
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter,  Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
Grev Turegatan 40,  S-114 38 Stockholm,  SWEDEN
e-mail:  pausch at saaf dot se   or    paul.schlyter at ausys dot se
WWW:     http://hotel04.ausys.se/pausch    http://welcome.to/pausch