Re: OMG!

[CUTjefbla@bconnex.net (Jeff Blakeney)]

On Tue, 29 May 2001 02:21:44 GMT, "**** ****" <***@***.com> wrote:

>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?

No, I'm saying that you are depriving them of money they should have
made because you now have a copy of their work that hasn't been paid
for.

>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.

I buy a copy of a program directly from a copyright holder for $50,
someone else buys a copy directly from the copyright holder for $50,
you come along and make a copy of the program without paying for it.

The copyright holder should have $150 in his bank account (because
there are three copies out there) but he only has $100.  The copyright
holder has lost $50.

Here is an analogy for you:

I buy a cupcake directly from a baker for $.50, some else buys a
cupcake directly from a baker for $.50, you come along and take a
cupcake without paying for it.

The baker should have $1.50 in his bank account (because there are
three cupcakes out there) but he only has $1.00.  The baker has lost
$.50.

Please don't nit pick this to death.  I realize there are some
differences between the two situations, that is why I say they are
analogous and not exactly the same, but the differences do not affect
the point I was making.

There really is no difference between you making of copy of a
copyrighted work or actually physically stealing an original copy of
that work.  In either case, there will be a copy in existence that has
never been paid for which therefore results in a loss to the copyright
holder.

>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.

Exactly.  By making a copy of a program you have almost certainly
deprived the copyright holder of ever being able to sell you a copy.

>Not
>because the criminal actually gained. (Depending on what he did, he may not
>have).

I'm not exactly sure what you are talking about here.

>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.

No, a programmer cannot sell their software to multiple people
simultaneously.  You still have to produce copies of IP stuff just
like you do with physical stuff.

>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.

Excuse me?  If you give away copies of a program I'm selling, then
those people aren't likely to buy my program, are they?  That would be
depriving me of sales.

>Those that do pirate his software, were almost
>certainly never potential customers.

If they weren't potential customers then they were people that had no
interest in the software at all and therefore would not even want a
pirated copy.  If they wanted a copy of the program but were unwilling
to pay the asking price for it, then they definitely are still
potential customers as they do want the program.

>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.

The number of sales that you figure you can get from doing market
research is primarily used to determine whether it is worth the time,
effort and money to produce something.  It has no bearings on the
amount that you actually sell, whether you make a profit or loss or
whether people are stealing from you.

There is no requirement that because a programmer only figured on
selling 10,000 copies of his software that they can't sell more.  If
they can sell 100,000 then congratulations to them.  But if 1,000
people still pirate the program, then the programmer has lost out on
1,000 potential sales.

>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.

Yes, bad reviews can result in losses but they are not illegal.
Pirating the product will result in losses and is illegal.

As to the morality of giving a bad review, it can go either way (which
is why I don't try to argue morals, remember? :-).  If the bad review
was done because the reviewer had a personal dislike for the producer
of the product, that would be, in my mind, immoral.  However, if the
bad review was done because the program had a number of nasty bugs
that had the potential to destroy data on a users system, then, in my
mind, that would be moral.

To help bring home my point about trying to keep morals and legality
separate, here is the same situations from a piracy point of view.  If
someone pirates a product because they have a personal dislike for the
producer, that would be illegal.  If someone pirates a product because
they feel it isn't worth paying for because it has a number of nasty
bugs, that would still be illegal.

>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.

There is as much need for intellectual property law as there is for
physical property law.  Property is property regardless of its
tangibility.

The current implementation of intellectual property law may not be the
best but it is what is currently in place.  It can be changed.  If you
don't like it, try to get it changed instead of just complaining about
how bad it is, ignoring it and trying to justify why you are breaking
the law.  More importantly, don't encourage other people to ignore the
law because you don't like it.

I'm not trying to justify intellectual property law.  I'm just
pointing out to people that what they are doing or promoting is
illegal.

--
 Jeff Blakeney - Dean of the Apple II Unversity on A2Central.com