🚀 go-pugleaf

nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) writes:

}In article <66150@sgi.sgi.com> karsh@trifolium.esd.sgi.com (Bruce Karsh) writes:

}   Does anyone really believe that anybody will invest in a scheme
}   which requires that you raise capital, develop a product, bring the
}   product to market, but after 5 years the product can be copied
}   freely?

}I'd just like to point out to Bruce that that is the current state of
}affairs, and I don't even have to wait 5 years.  I can take J. Random
}User's copy of 1-2-3, put it in my computer, and say "copy a: c:" and
}viola, I have a copy of 1-2-3.  This hasn't stopped companies from
}engaging in all the expensive behaviors Bruce mentioned above.

}Oh, you mean that isn't legal?  Tell me, is that stopping anyone besides
}a very few people?  I'm not saying that it's right, I'm saying that it's done,
}and it doesn't stop companies from creating huge investments.

But this gets into real murky waters.  One can say essentially the same
thing about shoplifting, or insider trading or any of a large number of
hard-to-track criminal activities.  Does that mean that having the
activities as being criminal is not warranted?  That enforcement of the
laws, to the extent that one can, ought not happen?  That such laws
should just all be repealed?

As for the huge investments, the question is "who pays"?  It pisses me
off when I think that every time I *buy* a software package, some
obscene percentage of its cost is the subsidization of the zillions of
copies that are just stolen.   Now project out to a world where such
copying is NOT illegal (and only practiced by those who are either
knowingly unethical or at least have a very well-honed set of
relativistic ethics) but rather generally permitted freely.  do you
think such developments would still happen AT ALL?

  /Bernie\