🚀 go-pugleaf

>In the case of a book, one can loan the book to a friend who can read it 
>without buying it.  We can also loan CD's and tapes to friends, or even tape
>music and TV shows off the air for free.  
>
>If you loan software to a friend, it is said to be illegal, and if you down-
>load software, you are supposed to pay a registration fee.  This is analogous
>to saying that you cannot loan books, or CD's to friends, and if you tape
>stuff from the radio or TV, you have to send in money to the copyright owner.


No. When you loan out a book, only the borrower can use it; hence, there
is still only one copy around. However, if you were to make a copy of the
book and then give your copy away, you'd indeed be in violation. You'd
also be pretty dumb, because copying costs more than buying the original,
in general. Copying software is free 'cept for the disk space. The analogy
only holds if you loan out the software without keeping a copy yourself.

When you tape stuff from radio or TV, you really should send in money
to the owner; and if you sell taped copies, you better believe you are
in violation of copyright!