From: richard@op.ph.ic.ac.uk (Richard Syratt )
Subject: Re: intellectual property and shit
Organization: Imperial College, London University
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 11:30:41 GMT
X-Posted-From: op.ph.ic.ac.uk
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol.ctr.columbia.edu

In article <1gjcs8INNk7u@rs1.rrz.Uni-Koeln.DE>, aeg03@rrz.uni-koeln.de (Jan T. Kim) 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.

Er... hang on ... there seem to be two options here (surpirse)...
(1) stamp on the pirates (your totally naive method) and
(2) make it not worth while for pirates to pirate by means other than (1)

For (2) you either need to make software cheap (and starve software
companies of their "energy" so they slowly die); make it free (and drop
a bloody big bomb on them) or make it extremely difficult to
copy... (now is this possible! - even CD to DAT will be no problem with
a falcon...)

It's been said elsewhere in the group that an alternative is needed...
but WHAT.  There doesn't seem to be any other route than (1) or (2).
I mean realistically... a hardware option is probably expensive and
definitely emulatable, and it wouldn't do much for the ST's small
share of the market.

|> 
|> >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*.  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?

Quite frankly, if the copyright holder has something which is of
infinite value (and therefore can be charged for infinitely), then
that thing will sell.  Period.  Whether you like it or not.  And when
you've got rent to pay on your premises, pensions/salaries etc., you charge.

If I buy an apple tree - am I only (morally) supposed to eat just enough
apples to cover the initial cost of the tree, and then have to give
the rest away?  OK, so if I had a really large crop, and couldn't eat
them all before they rotted, I might give some away, but that'd only
because they'd have more value to me that way.
(You're supposed to extend this argument to money... and that doesn't
grow on trees...).

|> 
|> Greetinx, Jan
|> 
|>  +- Jan Kim -- X.400:    S=kim;OU=vax;O=mpiz-koeln;P=mpg;A=dbp;C=de -+
|>  |             Internet: kim@vax.mpiz-koeln.mpg.dbp.de               |
|>  |                                                                   |
|>  *----=<  hierarchical systems are for files, not for humans  >=-----*

Richard