From: tal691@huxley.anu.edu.au (Tonio Loewald)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Why the Piracy? Here's why...
Date: 21 Jan 93 10:24:28 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
NNTP-Posting-Host: 150.203.2.12

jason@ab20.larc.nasa.gov (Jason Austin) writes:

>In article <1993Jan20.141942.23817@gn.ecn.purdue.edu> jess@gn.ecn.purdue.edu (Jess M Holle) writes:
>-> The only differences between software piracy and theft in general is that
>-> 
>-> 1)  There is no direct material cost to this sort of theft.

>	Wrong.  It takes years, thousands of hours of work, and
>computer hardware to create and maintain an average software package.
>All that material cost is in every copy of that program.

That material cost is indirect. Software is freely manufactured
once the mold is made, so to speak. Please debate the points I make,
not the points you believe I make or assume I make for your own
strange rhetorical purposes.

>-> And, more importantly....
>-> 
>-> 2)  There are MANY people who copy software which they simply cannot afford
>->     to buy, and therefore are not really costing the companies money, but
>->     rather simply acquiring products which they have no rights to use.

>	Is this supposed to justifiy the theft?

No. It's supposed to decapitate your piracy=theft argument, having
already dismembered kicked it severely about the gonads. But,
like a chicken, it struggles on.

Some famous and very wise French person whose name I am embarrassed
to have forgotten said something like:

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the poor as well as the
rich to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, to steal bread.

>-> Together these two differences say one thing to me: software companies do
>-> not actually lose NEARLY as much money as they say to piracy.  Yes, if they
>-> could have actually SOLD all the copies of software which are out there,
>-> they would have X more dollars as they say.  MOST of these copies would
>-> simply never be purchased if people actually had to pay for them, however,
>-> so the actual amount that software companies loose to piracy is something
>-> like X/1000, IMHO.

>	If someone has a free copy available to them and has the money
>to buy one, what are the chances of that person paying for it instead
>of just continuing to use the free copy?  The loses due to piracy each
>year are huge and have much to do with the high cost of many packages. 

>-> For example, I, as a student, have spent over $1000 on 2 compilers, a word 
>-> processor, a spreadsheet program, and a drawing program.  I use freeware
>-> programs for most of my other needs, along with an occasional shareware
>-> program.  If I were to copy $10,000 worth of software for my own use, I
>-> would, in reality, not be costing the companies a cent, since I cannot
>-> possibly afford to buy any more software in the forseeable future.  If
>-> anything, I'd be providing free advertising.

>	If you really needed any of that sofware, you would find a way
>to buy it if free copies weren't available.

>-> I do not intend this to be an arguement for legalizing/moralizing piracy,
>-> but rather to dispute the SPA's claim that $XXX,000,000 is lost to software
>-> pirating.  In light of the arguements above, this seems RIDICULOUS.

>	If you want to dispute their claim, you need to come up with
>the statistics that dispute their statistics.

This is weird. Who said what?

Is illegal taping destroying the music industry?
Yes, yes, yes!!! Instead of making billions and billions of dollars,
they're only making billions of dollars....

(Matt Groening, Life in Hell, from memory -- apologies for any errors.)

Tonio

-- 
Tonio Loewald | tal691@huxley.anu.edu.au

"Yes!! For the hundred and fiftieth time!
 We're burning in hell!!!" (John Callahan)