From: jamiller@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.datacomm
Subject: Re: "64 Mentality" Sofware Piracy is not theft
Date: 12 Apr 92 12:42:20 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services
Summary: Software Piracy not equivilent to 'Theft'
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.misc comp.sys.amiga.advocacy


>>Nope , you dont steal hardware because there's a significant chance of
>>getting caught and getting punished which isnt the case when
>>stealing software. After all , the chances of the police breaking
>>your door down when you copy a program from a friend or download it
>>from a pirate BBS are microscopic. If stealing hardware was as easy
>>and risk free as stealing hardware you and you friends would do
>>that too.
> 
>   I actually have more respect for the common car thief or any other criminal-
> type that takes the risk of getting caught during the act of taking something.
> 
>   It's also amazing how someone would never think of walking into an Egghead
> or similar store to physically steal a program yet doesn't even blink when
> copying the same damn thing from someone else.  Better yet, the ultimate
> rationalization, spliting the cost of the program amongst two or more people,
> yeah, that's a real cute one.
> 
>   -jack-

Jack,

	These questions are really interesting to me.  How do ideas fall
into a Lockean idea of property and the natural right to property?
Quite simply they don't.  Investigate these ideas from a philosophical
perspective and there can be no robust defense of the position that
claims it is a crime to _copy_ software.  An instructor once used the
following analogy.  If a man raises corn in a field he owns, he has a
right to the fruits yeilded from the mixing of his labor and the land.
He can take his corn and sell it or he can eat it; he can give it
someone to someone if he is so inclined.  If he sells that corn to
someone he relenquishes ownership of that corn.  The new owner is also
free to do what he pleases with it.
	Suppose that corn was worth $5.  The man who raised it doesn't
have to sell that corn for $5; he can sell it for $8 or for $2.  He is
NOT however guaranteed a profit on his corn.  It is wrong for someone
to take his posession without some fair exchange, but if an exchange
has ocurred it is because both parties agreed to the exchange
(according to capitalist models).  That man's growing the corn is not
influenced by what purpose the corn will be used for once sold.  
	If you write a program and release it to the public with the
knowledge that a person who purchases your program can reproduce your
program you have agreed implicitly to allow the person purchasing the
product ownership of the product in exchange for the offer presented
by the purchaser.
	If you sell me corn I can take that corn and plant it in my
own field which may in turn deny you the opportunity to sell me corn
next year, BUT YOU KNOW THAT WHEN YOU SELL IT TO ME AND YOU STILL
AGREE TO THE EXCHANGE.  If a person takes a disk which one has
purchased from you and puts what "numbers" were stored on that disk on
another disk for his friend it is no longer your business!  You have
been compensated for you labors for a price which was mutually agreed
upon.  
	I'm quite disappointed that someone could equate physical
theft of a product which was not a mutually agreed upon exchange with
the above scenario.  You who admire car thieves and shop lifters I
must assert you have a very distorted view of what constitutes
"Theft."  The scenario above is not theft.  
	These restrictive measures that severly restrict a person's
right to ownership attempt to draw support for their positions from
the notion of rights which they are destroying.
	It is clear that only because the Amiga platform is so POORLY
managed by Commodore are these issues now significant.  If Jack and
others were on a platform like the mac or dos where market share is
significant where the profit potential is better we wouldn't hear all
this rucus over a relatively insignificant threat.  The greater threat
to YOU Jack is the fact that the Amiga market share is shrinking!  R&D
is insignificant.  The products focus is narrowing to video and
animation and there is now organized direction or focus from commodore
for future development.
	Dave Haynie and all the other devoted members of Commodore's
working staff are to be commended for helping keep commodore alive but
unfortunately technicians development engineers alone can not keep a
company from fated doom.  
	Recal the long posts in *.*.*.misc earlier this year about
Gould's bout with a shareholder at the meeting and it becomes clear.
Commodore's management is interested in profit.  They don't care
whether YOU Jack can feed your family or not.  They have all but
abandoned the American market and the prospects for the future are not
bright.  2.04 can't save the Amiga and neither could 2.1 (if it
exists) and neither can the extermination of every Amiga pirate whose
alleged parasitic fixations pose such an alleged threat.  If you have
serious commitments to this platform, fine but keep in mind most Amiga
user's are either using it for home use or in Amateur video, and
you're never going to make money directed at consumers facing
forclosure and layoffs in the bleak economic horizon of today.

jamiller@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
james miller

/* These are my views and I thought of them first so if you steal them */
/* and one day make lots of money from the venture I will sue you and  */
/* make you feel guilty with a silly lo-res screen with nothing but red */
/* text on it that jump to the front periodically and have no depth gadgets.*/
/* NOT!  Just kidding...                                               */
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.datacomm