From: cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne)
Subject: Re: intellectual property and shit
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, University of Ottawa
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 92 04:50:06 GMT

In article <1gjcs8INNk7u@rs1.rrz.Uni-Koeln.DE> kim@vax.mpiz-koeln.mpg.dbp.de writes:
>In <1992Dec14.203630.16753@nosc.mil> healy@nosc.mil (Mike Healy) writes:
>
>>I guess my point is that people do have a need to make a living, and if
>>they choose to do this by making and selling software, this is a
>>legitimate activity. I don't see how the fact that someone is making
>>a profit off software justifies piracy.
>
>Such an  argument  is  naive  and  completely  one-sided.  It  is
>sometimes  made by certain people, but it has not yet shown up in
>this discussion. However, the fact  that  one-sidedly  justifying
>piracy  is  nonsense does not mean that one-sidedly condemning it
>is the sensible thing to do. I think that both parts, pirates and
>software  marketers,  contribute  about  the  same to keeping the
>vicious circle going. There's little use in  one-sidedly  blaming
>either  of  them. Much rather, both users and programmers need to
>develop new ways of dealing with each other, and these  new  ways
>should get rid of the vicios circle.

How is his argument "naive and completely one-sided"?  It seems fairly
reasonable to me.  You wind up changing the topic by griping about
_Software_Marketers_, which is quite a different group of people from
the programmers that actually produce the software, in many cases.

The "problem" isn't with the programmers; nor is it necessarily with
the laws.  The problem is between the sleazy parts of the software
marketing business, and the pirates that make up the "sleazy" side of
the "users."

>>If something is overpriced,
>>don't buy it. Should an author be required to give away his book after
>>he has made back the "cost"? Or should musicians be denied royalties
>>on their songs after they have received a certain amount to cover 
>>the cost? How is it different selling a software product?
>
>If copyright is supposed to enable authors  to  get  compensation
>for  the effort it took them to produce their stuff, it basically
>should expire once it did so. For this issue, it  matters  little
>how  much the compensation actually is. The crucial point is that
>it ought  ot  be  *limited*,  not  *infinite*.

And it most certainly IS limited.  There isn't ANYBODY that is ever
going to make an "infinite" amount of money off ANY software.  I'm not
even quibbling over your misuse of the word "infinite."

Most mass-market software DOES have a very limited life expectancy in
terms of sales value.  In case you haven't noticed, there's a new
edition of DOS out almost every year, as well as new editions of
various and sundry compilers and spreadsheets and word processors.

If you check out your local software distributor, he probably has a
table of "remaindered" computer games; stuff that didn't sell very
well that they'll let go for a song.  The compensation is NEVER
anywhere near infinite.

>As  long  as  the
>compensation  one  can  get  from  a  limited amount of effort is
>limited, one may more or less reasonably argue  that  the  market
>will  take  care  of  overpricing, i.e. people will buy from less
>expensive competitors etc. But  if,  according  to  the  idea  of
>copyrighting  software,  the  holder  of  a  copyright can charge
>infinitely often for a thing that took a finite effort to create,
>how  can any market mechanism be expected to discriminate between
>these infinities?

How is this different from the publishing of books or magazines?  Do
you think that it is WRONG that books are permitted to be copyrighted?
Books only take a "finite effort to create," (although it SEEMS
infinite :-)) and can be "infinitely" reproduced on demand.

Market mechanisa are quite good at finding "infinities" like this.
This is where Borland came from, as a reaction to the high prices
charged for Lotus 123, and the family of Microsoft compilers.  Nobody
is going to be charging "infinitely often."  If they can do so for a
time, then this fact will naturally bring competitors into the
marketplace.

-- 
Christopher Browne                |     PGP 2.0 key available
cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca           |===================================
University of Ottawa              |  The Personal Computer:  Colt 45
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