🚀 go-pugleaf

paisley@u.washington.edu (beau paisley) writes:
| 
| Remember; violating a software copyrite deprecates the quality
| of the software industry as a whole and is no less a heinous
| crime than stealing your neighbors' paycheck.
| 

Profits are confiscated _daily_ from criminals such as drug
traffickers, money laundering operations, etc. But why stop there? Why
not confiscate the profits of those made by other equally heinous
crimes? Those that profit from proprietary software, those that profit
from software patents, those that exploit the notion of
intellectual-property to the fullest extent, gaining profit and power
at the expense of the rest of the computing community -- perhaps all
such profits ought likewise to be thwarted.

As for the quality of the software industry, perhaps if their profits
were somehow curtailed (and hence the quality of their product
reduced), greater portions of the community would be driven to
existing base of high-quality free software. If this were the case,
then perhaps the blatant pirating of software would be morally
justified...

Brian Mancuso

| "Computation is the art of carefully throwing away information." |
	                | Boston University Computer Science Dept. |
	                | Tel: 617.352.8685 Net: brianm@cs.bu.edu  |
	                | Pgp Public Key Avail. Member of the LPF. |