Re: WHO???

[wbdesnoy@acs1.acs.ucalgary.ca (Byron Desnoyers Winmill)]

I know that walking into this debate is like walking into a bear trap, but:

SirThomas commented that:
: The estimated annual revenue loss is printed in the tens of billions every so
: often in the industry trade papers.  I'll keep an eye out for it.  And don't
: anyone give me that, "You can lie with statistics," garbage.  The numbers are

No, statistics do not lie.  Yet the conclusions drawn from them can be poor.
While it is easy to estimate how much software is copied using statistics,
with very little room for error, saying that the software industry would
make tens of billions of dollars by eliminating piracy is sheer foolishness.

Most of these tens of billions of dollars would not be earned because sales
would not be made.  This is because consumers are only willing to pay so
much for their software.  Where would most of these sales be lost?  My first
guess would be in upgrades.

But copying material which is still under a copywrite is illegal and immoral.
Tells us a lot about our society, does it not?

: Why is this concept so hard for some on here to understand?

You are correct in your *single* point of programmers deserving their pay
for developing and maintaining excellent products.  But let's look at the
software distributors.

<rant_mode>
The people who actually distribute the products are as much villians to the
software developers as pirates are.  We have created a system of technology
where copying is not only common, but encouraged.  Let's face it: almost
every piece of modern software is copied at least once.  This is when it is
installed from the CD-ROM to your hard disk.  This means that one piece of
software can be shared among dozens of users without making even one exact
duplicate of the distribution medium.  Just because the medium is not very
easy to copy (without special equipment) does not mean that all is well.  We
can make similar (though not the same) arguments about the Apple II days.
</rant_mode>

So what I am trying to say is that duplication is at the core of everything
we do on computers.

Now pirating Apple II software puts us into another fickle because we are
still pirating software, but this software has been abandoned by both the
software developers and the publishers alike.  Some of us would argue that
piracy does not make a difference in such cases, while others would argue
that it takes away from the development and sales of new software.  But
when you come down to it, it is illegal.  So if you do not like it, lobby
your government to change copyright laws before you copy that floppy!

I, for one, can live mostly off the freeware developed for the Apple II.
And that is the way I plan to keep it.  No expenses, and no moral decisions.
<grin>

Byron.