From: foegelle@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Michael Foegelle)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: The Perennial Piracy Debate (was Re: Bilestoad)
Date: 5 Sep 92 21:51:49 GMT
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX

In article <DHuFqB2w165w@bluemoon.rn.com> cmcurtin@bluemoon.rn.com (Matthew Curtin) writes:
>
>While I agree that personal flames should be taken to email or alt.flame, 
>I am going to take issue with your statment about this being a dead topic. 
>With the current state of the Apple II software market, it should be 
>obvious that software publishers don't stand to make the zillions of 
>dollars on other (inferior ;) ) platforms. SO, this issue is of special 
>interest to the Apple II community. Apple II software publishers are going 
>to be dependant upon each sale they make in order to cover their costs and 
>make a worthwhile return. If we steal their products, they will not be 
>able to continue to produce great software. They simply won't be able to 
>afford it.

Well, I'm a programmer myself (at least part of the time) and I understand
the concern about piracy (don't have to worry about that on my private
contracts) and it is something that affects me too even though all of 
my Apple releases have either been ShareWare or public domain.  

My main point in that post was that the sequence of arguments about the 
lost money policy was getting extremely old and was rather pointless.  It
is a fact that its nonsense to think that every pirate copy means that the
author lost the market value of that copy, since not everyone with a pirate
copy would buy the original, but it is also nonsense to say that if the copy
weren't pirated, the author (or seller at least, since not all programmers 
reap the rewards of the marketting company) would not make more money.  At
any rate, the point was that we all KNOW this, and the bickering was getting
boring.  (I'm kind of ashamed of myself for posting this now because it's
beginning to look just like what I was complaing about, but since I've
written it...)

I AM very concerned about developing our rights here in this electronic 
domain to insure that everyone receives the fair shake they deserve.  This
extends beyond just the topic of software piracy, of course.  (I happen to
know Steve Jackson, though not more than through mere aquaintance, but the
thought of what happened to him and his company happening to me or anyone
else is of major concern.  If you don't know the story, that's material 
for another subject heading, and possibly a different base.)  Of possible
interest to people here is the fact that over the summer, a consortium (sp)
of software companies put together a task force here in the Austin area
which has been given FEDERAL MARTIAL authority!  They can walk into anyplace
and check your computers for illegal copies of software and take whatever 
legal action they wish!  The University of Texas publicly agreed to cooperate
with any investigations and you should have SEEN the flurry of people running
around saying "Get anything we didn't buy off the computer!"  The idea is
especially annoying since we do research under private contracts and often
have data and programs we've written which are concidered confidential 
property of the company who supplied the contract.  (considered, but anyway).
I do welcome comments on the above, but let's at least change the subject
name!  =)
>
>If you're uninterested in continuing to read the piracy debate, then take 
>a clue from the header, figure it's something you're not interested in, 
>and move on.
>
> __________________________________________________________________________
>| C. Matthew Curtin             ! "But I am the enlightened one, they are  |
>| P.O. Box 27081                ! but mere sheep, following each other in  |
>| Columbus, OH 43227-0081       ! the name of compatibility." -B. Heineman |
>| cmcurtin@bluemoon.uucp        !              Apple II Forever!           |
>|_cmcurtin@bluemoon.rn.com______!_____________Support__Shareware!__________|

Michael Foegelle
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