Re: Ancient wares and present values

[CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney)]

NOTE:  This message got very long very fast and I didn't really intend
for it to do so.  However, it would be too time consuming to try to
pare it down any further.  There might still be a few unclear points
or spelling or grammar errors that I didn't catch in my first edit.


On Fri, 30 Jun 2000 18:55:30 GMT, "Paul Grammens" <grammens@svn.net>
wrote:

>Well, Jeff, in your world perhaps the only choices are good and evil, but in
>mine, sometimes you have to choose between "bad" and "less bad".

To me it is mostly about legal and illegal.  Good and evil (or bad)
are too subjective.  If you make a copy of a piece of software which
violates that software's copyright, did you break the law?  Yes.  Was
it evil or bad?  It depends.

>Bad would
>be letting all the old software sit on deteriorating, original
>copy-protected diskettes until it's all gone. Less bad is to archive it
>online for posterity.

I don't have a problem with archiving Apple II software, it is the
illegal distribution that I have a problem with.

>One of the attractions of the Apple II is the large
>body of historic software for it, if you limit that to the dwindling supply
>of original software, you're going to end up with an Apple II user group the
>size of the Coleco Adam user group.

Do you have any idea how many public domain, freeware, shareware and
commercial titles are still available?  You could use your Apple II
for years without having to pirate a single title and there are more
titles being released and even more commercial titles being
reclassified or made available through other channels all the time.
There is a ton of legal Apple II software available.

Why do people insist that the copyright of a title that they want
shouldn't be valid anymore?  Because they want that title and are
unwilling to either put in the effort to track down an original and
buy it or find the copyright holder and ask for it to be reclassified
or whatever.  

If the people pirating Apple II software were to help with
reclassification efforts, we would be getting more and more software
available to us.  There would be a lot more incentive for these people
to help with reclassification efforts if they weren't able to download
any title they wanted whenever they wanted.  Seeing as this is the
legal way to do things I would thing that this is the way things would
be handled.

This would also make the developers much happier and much more
comfortable with releasing new software because they would see that
more people are respecting the copyrights of others and therefore
would be more confident that their rights will also be respected.

>Your way, the Apple II rapidly becomes extinct.

"My" way the Apple II continues to exist and grow and would also help
to unite the Apple II community thereby helping it to grow even more.
"Your" way, the developers just keep quietly disappearing and you'll
end up getting people stopping by for a little while to check out the
Apple II scene but they won't stay because there will be nothing new
to keep them interested.  Even you will probably give up once the
conversations here die down because there will be nothing new to talk
about.  I won't hazard a guess as to how long this would take but it
will certainly happen faster without developers producing new stuff.

>The existing way, which
>will prevail no matter how many tantrums your ilk throws, will preserve the
>Apple II for future hobbiests.

Even hobbiest have to pay for their hobby.  If you are unwilling to
put in the effort and pay the prices required to get you the things
you want to pursue your use of the Apple II as a hobby you should
probably look into getting yourself another hobby.

>I know there are a few people who still use
>their Apple II as their primary computing platform, and more power to them
>in their excentricity, but frankly, the future is people like me who just
>cherish and admire them as historical artifacts.

Haven't you noticed how expensive historical artifacts can be?  If you
want one, you better be prepared to pay for it.  Why is software
suddenly worthless once it gets older?  More importantly, why do you,
who just stated that the Apple II is a historical artifact, think that
it is worthless?

Besides, others would disagree with you and say that the future of the
Apple II is in emulation.  :-)

>I prefer original
>diskettes, BTW, but many of mine are no longer usable and new ones can't be
>had. I also like to run them from a hard disk.

I too prefer having originals and as long as you have the original
diskette then you are probably okay to have that original restored
from someone else's original.  This is legal gray area, though.

This is where an archive would come in handy.  Allowing people to
restore their originals but not letting everyone and their brother
download whatever they feel like.

>I  wonder if this obsession
>with copy protection didn't contribute mightily to the demise of the
>platform.

Copy protection was created due to a need for it.  It served its
purpose during the infancy of home computing to keep the number of
pirated copies down.  The more difficult you make something, the less
likely people are going to put in the effort to achieve it.  Kind of
like how so many people here would rather download an illegal copy of
a piece of software because it is quicker and easier than tracking
down an original or trying to get it reclassified.

>For example, I have Print Shop for the IIgs and the same
>generation of Print Shop for the PC. You can install the IIgs version to
>hard disk, BUT you have to insert the original floppy in the drive every
>time you use it (wow, how... convenient, especially for the grade school I
>bought it from.)  The PC version installs and runs from the hard disk, like
>just about all other PC software. No wonder the teacher replaced the IIgs
>with a PC.

Well, I think if you go back to when that title was released for both
machines you will probably find that there was a lot more pirating
going on in the Apple II world than in the PC world.  This would
account for the Apple II version being copy protected and the PC
version being unprotected.  However, this is just a guess on my part.

>Another teacher asked me to try to find a downloadable version of some
>educational software that was copy protected and no longer sold. She was
>down to her last usable diskette. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it
>anywhere. I would have cheerfully violated it's copyright.

As I said above, you probably would have been okay to restore her
original.

>You'll be
>relieved to know that those Apple II's have since been scrapped, so there's
>no longer any reason for that teacher to contemplate violating any Apple II
>copyrights.

That's too bad that they got rid of the Apple IIs.  However, I
wouldn't be too concerned about piracy in an organization like that
because there are usually very strict rules about that sort of thing
as the organization can be held accountable for any illegal copies of
software on their computer systems.  I'm sure she didn't want to lose
her job or get into any sort of trouble for using illegal copies of
software.

>Praise the Lord! The fewer Apple II's left, the less piracy!
>Get the axe, Jeff!

I find the opposite to be true.  The fewer Apple IIs left the higher
the percentage of pirates left.  :-)

>There's a good example. As it happens, I got my first Apple II just weeks
>before he had his melt-down. I downloaded his FAQ, and the next time I tried
>to access his web page, he had a note on it saying he'd reformatted his hard
>disk to make sure he'd done all he could to spite the Apple II community.
>Like QC, the guy needs professional help.

Yes, but ask yourself what drove Nathan to that point and what drives
Q_C to do what he does.  They didn't/don't just do it for the hell of
it.

>No.  There would be no Apple II community for the developers (both of them?)
>to write software for, without the ability for new users to download
>software for the Apple II they bought for $1 at a garage sale.

Funny, I personally have over 300 MB of Apple II software that is
legally distributable and I can easily get my hands on even more.
Heck, look at the Golden Orchard CD-ROM.  600+ MB of legally
distributable software and files and that isn't a complete library
either.

Like I said above, you can use an Apple II for a very long time
without every having to break the law to do so.

>(Actually, I
>only wanted the Imagewriter II, the seller insisted that I take the complete
>IIc system too if I bought the printer. I got hooked by the elegant
>design. )

Heh.  Maybe Apple IIs should have stickers placed on them warning
people of their addictiveness.  :-)

>I hate to break this to you, but piracy is not the reason there is very
>little new software produced for the A2 platform.

Well, I personally know a number of Apple II developers that have
slowed or stopped their Apple II developments because of all the
piracy going on.  Of these same people that still develop Apple II
stuff, when they do release something new, they often restrict its
distribution to try to reduce the chances of people abusing their
rights because they know there are a lot of people that will.

Heck, even myself, I won't be releasing a working version of my e-mail
client to the public.  I'll only be releasing a crippled demo version
for people to see what it can do and how it does it.  All this because
I want to try to minimize the damage that some people will try to
cause.

>You seem like a reasonable fellow.

Thank you.  I like to think so.

>I'm amazed that you think there'd be more software being
>written, if the Apple II community strictly observed all copyrights.

See my arguments above.  Simple logic and my personal experience make
it abundantly clear to me that we would be much better off it people
stopped breaking the law.  Funny, that's kind of why we have laws,
don't we?  :-)

>I
>believe there'd be no Apple II community to write software for if you had
>your way.

Well, you are entitled to your opinion just as I am entitled to mine.
However, when it comes to whether distributing old, copyrighted, Apple
II software is legal or not, I win all the time.  :-)

>But it's moot. The status quo will prevail.  The dead horse you
>copyright-obsessed types have been beating is long gone, there's just a
>crater there.

Well, I keep seeing pirate sites disappear so maybe what us
"copyright-obsessed types" are saying is right and that horse is still
bucking.  :-)

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| Jeff Blakeney - Dean of the Apple II University in A2Pro on Delphi     |
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