Re: The software piracy issue

[irsman@winternet.com (Ian Schmidt)]

In article <4p6f4n$ano@usenet2.interramp.com>,
Tom Zuchowski  <cd003508@interramp.com> wrote:
>irsman@winternet.com (Ian Schmidt) wrote:

>>They're only actually pirate if they actually come with the ROM images, like
>>the popular STM emulator on the Mac.
>>
>Huh?  I'd like you to explain your reasoning.  Yes, the emulators don't 
>actually come with pirated copies of Apple ROMs and OS, but the user has 
>to pirate them himself or get them from a pirate site such as asimov in 
>order to use the emulator.

I'm saying that without ROMs and OSs, the emulator software itself is
clean, unless it emulates a machine with copyrighted and publically 
undocumented internals (such as the SNES).  The Apple II is, after all,
made almost entirely of stock 74xxx series parts, and is covered in great
detail in a lot of books, including some of Apple's own, so this doesn't
apply.  Ditto to the PC and others.

>Is it your contention that stealing software is OK as long as we do it 
>more discreetly than asimov's in-your-face way?

Not at all.  I write software for a living, so this issue happens to be
pretty interesting to me.  I also work closely with Electronic Arts, who
happens to own the copyright on a decent amount of the asimov software.
It remains to be seen if Legal actually wants to bother with those bozos,
though...

--
Ian Schmidt - irsman@winternet.com - http://www.winternet.com/~irsman/
    "Where would I be without IBM?" - P. Robb, Information Society