🚀 go-pugleaf

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>From: ashing@milton.u.washington.edu (Al Shing)
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>: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.  
>: 
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>  When you lend a book or CD to a friend you no longer have
>  the book or CD; he does.   The only way this would be analogous
>  to software would be if you deleted the software from your hard
>  disk and then gave him the floppies to install on his machine.
>  And under the terms of most software license agreements this
>  is perfectly legal, since the ones I've seen license the
>  software for use on one machine or sometimes one user.
>
>  Another difference betweeen books and software is that your 
>  friend presumably reads the book and gives it back to you.
>  Software is typically used many times.  The only kinds of
>  books which are used many times are reference or technical 
>  volumes, and if you make a copy of, say, a dictionary for your
>  friend (say you had a high-speed, low-cost copy machine)
>  you would, indeed be violating the law.

   This difference is bigger than you think...yes, a book, especially
a reference manual, can only be in one place at a time.  The software
analogy is, unfortunately, some sort of utility, such as a hard disk
optimizer.  Software companies do NOT approve of sharing this type of
software (it is used once per machine :) and it should be (I don't know
if it is or isn't) perfectly legal.  From what I can remember, however,
software companies require site licenses for these kinds of products.

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>  The problem with software is that it is possible for two
>  or more people to have identical copies at the same time.
>  This is not the case with books or CD's.  You can tape music
>  off the air but this is for your own use.  If you start distributing
>  copies to your friends you probably are violating the law.  
>  And besides, taping off the air doesn't give you nearly the
>  quality of the original, whereas a copy of a piece of software
>  is a PERFECT copy, it's as good as the original.   Also, the
>  music business works differently: record companies SEEK to
>  have their music broadcast; that's how they promote their
>  products; that people may tape them off the air is the price
>  they pay for that and they grudgingly accepted the Supreme
>  Court's decision on that.  There is no analogy with software.
>  The software industry does not broadcast copies of our products
>  to the public, say via a public access dial-up.  Each copy is
>  issued individually to parties who are fully informed before-
>  hand what the terms of the license agreement are.  

  This is often not the case.  Lots of software comes with a "shrink-
wrapped" license.  Some of the better outfits have a return-for-full-
refund option even after opening the package, but not all of them.

>
>  As someone who writes software for a living I may be prejudiced, 
>  but I claim I or my comapny have a right to be compensated
>  for my work.   Using a piece of software which I wrote, without
>  compensating me or my company is stealing, plain and simple.
>  

  I agree fully, but is a piece of software you wrote 5, 3, or even 2 years ago
valuable enough to warrant a continued copyright?  Most 5 year old software
has been superceeded by better software [not neccessarily by the same
author] and should lose its copyright status.  In fact, most software is
updated annually, but it SHOULD lose copyright status after a few years
rather than authors-lifetime+50 years [note that the copyright is virtually
forever if the author should happen to be a company or if the copyright is
sold to a company].

>                                                ---Peter

Charles_K_Hughes@cup.portal.com