From: wayne@eng.umd.edu (Wayne C. McCullough)
Subject: Re: Most Wanted Cracks List
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 92 13:14:07 GMT
Organization: College of Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park

In article <1992Jul23.154934.22641@engage.pko.dec.com> marshall@tfh.enet.dec.com (Hunting the Snark) writes:
>No, that is not what I'm saying. Consider this scenario:
>
>User A buys game Z for $40 finishes the game and sells to user B.
>User B buys game Z for $30 (from A), finishes the game and sells to user C.
>User C buys game Z for $20 (from B), finishes the game and sells to user D.
>User D buys game Z for $10 (from C), finishes the game and throws it away.
>
>According to all the "Software Avatars", this is perfectly legal and ethical.
>
>Consider this scenario:
>
>Users A,B,C,D chip in $10 apiece to buy game Z for $40.
>they make 3 copies, play the game simultaneously and when finished, throw
>their copy away.
>
>According to all the Avatars, this is perfectly illegal, immoral and promotes
>tooth decay.
>
>I just don't see the difference. In both cases, the producer makes 1 sale and
>gets $40, 4 people play the game for a net cost to each of $10.

Take both of your scenarios to a logical extreem.  Instead of 4 users, there
are going to be 4000 users, U(0)..U(3999).  Let us also assume that it
takes 1 week for any given user to finish the game.

In the first scenario, U(3999) would have to wait more than 76 years to get
his turn.  All but the first ~50 or so users would feel very cheated by
the whole deal, and some of them, say N%, will possibly go out and buy the
game.  Yes, they own part of the original copy of the game, but what is the
differance between $40.00 and $40.01 to a single user?  Not enough to make
any real impact on his/her decision to buy.  So in actuallity, the company
would not make $40, but would make N*(3950)/100*40+40 dollers out of this 
sample population, possibly more (from users in the first 50 or so, not
finishing, or wanting to go back and play it again.)  The estimated income
from the game if people would buy it seperately is N'*(4000)/100*40 dollers,
where N'% is the percentage of any game playing population that would buy
this game at $40.  N' is going to be very close, if not equal to N, because
N is the population that would buy the game at $40.01.  Of course, this
simple model doesn not take several factors into acount, such as border effects
(ie frustration of U(51), etc), but idealy this is a large enough population,
so that it is acceptable to be statistical about it.  Note though, ideally,
if everyone sticks it out, in 77 years, 4000 users have played this game,
and the company has only made $40, just as your model has it.

In the second scenario, you have U(0) distribute the game to U(1)..U(3999),
and (ignoring distribution time and costs), in one week after the purchace
of the game, Every one has solved it, every one can go back and play it again,
and everyone only payed $0.01 for the whole game.  Now, there is a slight
chance that a percentage of the population will go buy a copy of the game, 
because they want the full docs, or guilty concionse, or whatever, but that
percentage aproaches zero, as I am sure most of you will agree.  Therefore
the number of games purchased from the company may be greater than one, but
is on the same order of magnitude as one.  So the sales of the game again
will be N''*(4000)/100*40+40, where N'' is the percentage of users who will
buy the game after the original distributed game is purchased, and N''<<N or
N'.  So the game company really looses out.

The differance in the two scenarios is time.  In the first scenario, 77 years
pass before everyone plays, in the second, 1 week passes.  In the first
scenario, one can expect to wait years before playing the game, while in
the second, there is virtually no time gap at all.  One of the major factors
that encourages people to buy games is waiting to play it.

I hope that after I put the situation in this extreme, you see why one is
illegal, and the other is not.

>For the moment ignore the legality issue. Seems to me that both scenarios
>should be ethically equivalent, either both are ok or both are bad.

No.  If people were very patiant, this would be true.  THey are not.

>What seems to get overlooked is that important step of "throw it away" when
>the game is done. This is why the argument above does not apply to "boring"
>business applications; they generally are not used for a couple weeks and
>thrown away.

Wayne.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games