🚀 go-pugleaf

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.

>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?

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               |
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