From: fuller@athena.cs.uga.edu (James P. H. Fuller)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Yet more software piracy
Date: 29 Jul 92 18:19:06 GMT
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

I wrote:

>    The lost profits argument is vapor, because you don't have any objec-
>tive handle on what your stolen program is really worth (as opposed to the
>price you arbitrarily stick on it.)  There's nothing to keep you from
>setting the price of your shareware program at one billion dollars U.S. per
>copy, and then claiming one billion bucks of lost profit each time it gets
>pirated.


bazyar@teal.csn.org (Jawaid Bazyar) replies:

>  If someone doesn't think a program is worth the sticker price, that
> *DOES NOT* give them the right to pirate it.

   Never claimed that it did.  I wasn't arguing in favor of software piracy.
I did say that one particular argument against piracy, specifically the
lost-profits argument, is full of cheese.
   
   
Jawaid Bazyar continues:

> Capitalism works because someone either thinks a product is worth a certain
> amount, and purchases it, or they think it _isn't_ worth a certain amount,
> and they don't purchase it.  If a particular company is having a hard time
> selling a product, they lower the price to try to increase sales.  Any
> Econ 101 textbook will tell you that.

    The way a mixed capitalist economy works in the real world bears virtu-
ally no relation to what they teach in Econ 101.  In the upperlevel econo-
mics courses they explicitly admit this.  For instance, e101 texts seldom
have anything to say about the notion that corruption may be necessary to a
functioning economy -- but Alexander Hamilton, among others, had quite a bit
to say about this.
    

Jawaid Bazyar:

>  It's simple- if you use software and do not pay for it, you're
> committing a crime.  Perhaps this personally incriminates you, causing
> you discomfort.  Not my problem, and not an excuse to pirate.

     You oversimplify.  I use a great deal of software for which I paid
nothing, without committing any crime.  The entire Free Software Foun-
dation suite of *nix software, for example; lots of things from comp.
sources.unix, for example; on my IIe everything I regularly use: kermit
for file transfer and vt100 terminal emulation, FrEdwriter for file browsing,
etc., etc.  It's all copyrighted freeware.  Then there's the stuff I wrote
myself....  Let's you be a bit more scrupulous and say commercial software
when you mean commercial software.


Jawaid Bazyar:

>  I tell you what.  Everyone knows Porsches are overpriced.  If you _truly_
> believe what you're saying as regards to piracy, go out and steal
> a Porsche.  After all, it's got an arbitrary sticker price, right? After
> all, it's not hurting Porsche Co because you'd never have paid them
> anyway, right?  No argument in favor of piracy can fly.

    Though I really have no interest in Porsches (my tastes run more to 
Jeeps) if you can arrange things so that a) I can see a Targa on the street,
b) I can copy it with the touch of a button and c) I can drive away in the
copy while leaving the original right where it was -- why then I just might 
stretch a point and *do* it.  If I did, I wouldn't have given anyone *any* 
valid cause to complain.  I didn't steal from Porsche: it wasn't their car,
they'd already sold it.  I didn't steal from the owner, his car is still
right where he left it.  I haven't infringed Porsche's intellectual property
since I haven't sold or given away any Porsche clones.  I might conceivably
have caused Porsche some lost profits but you already know what I think of
the lost profits argument - it is demonstrably bogus.

Jawaid Bazyar:

> We priced GNO *very* fairly, and any of our customers will tell you that.
> Nintendo cartridges are (IMHO) priced excessively.  However, IIgs games
> that cost half what a NES game does get pirated, simply because it's pos-
> sible.  THIS DOES NOT MAKE IT RIGHT.

    No, but it does guarantee that it's going to happen in massive amounts.
The ONE, the ONLY way to STOP a given class of crime it to make it hard to
commit.  Moral arguments and draconian punishments have no effect on crimi-
nals (ask the drug dealers, heh.)  Since copy-protection is a dead issue 
(mass-market purchasers won't tolerate it and computer hobbyists just break 
it) I think you had better get used to widespread software copying.

    As for me personally -- Not having a GS among the computers lying around 
the house, I promise I have no interest in pirating GNO.  In fact I have 
precisely two shareware programs that I use regularly, and both are fully
registered.  (Game cartridges?  They cause instant and irreversible 
loss of IQ and I wouldn't touch one by remote control from a concrete bunker
in Brazil.)  

    So I count as an independent observer -- I have no vested interest in
stealing software *or* in publishing it for sale.  And in my opinion as an
independent observer software piracy is indeed a wrong and a crime, but it's
about on the same level of wrongness and criminality as jaywalking or illegal
left turns.  My feeling is that there *should not be* a market in software --
programming should be done for fun and to impress one's colleagues, exactly
the way mathematics has been done (and very successfully too) for centuries.
    Heh, heh, heh.  Imagine a "freelance mathematician" who'll write you out
a definite integral for a fee -- and you get to *use* it but you only get to
install it in one brain at a time and you can't make any copies.  Software
publishers are making exactly this kind of offer, and then wondering why
prople get offended.


 > Jawaid Bazyar          |   Ask me about the GNO Multitasking Environment
 > Procyon, Inc.          |   for the Apple IIgs!   
 > bazyar@cs.uiuc.edu     |   P.O Box 620334
 > --Apple II Forever!-   |   Littleton, CO 80162-0334   (303) 933-4649


| James P. H. Fuller, research coordinator   Soil/Water Biology Laboratory |
|                                            Institute of Ecology          |
| work: fuller@athena.cs.uga.edu             University of Georgia         |
| home: (crom2 rejoins the bitstream soon)   Athens, GA USA                |
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2