🚀 go-pugleaf

On Wed, 10 Jul 2013 13:36:41 -0600, Tanzen <waldby...@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>I think everybody knows software piracy is wrong.

Ah, the old legality vs. morality discussion.

Problem is "everybody" is a broad-reaching demographic, which includes
a lot of people that like to define morality (and sometimes legality)
for themselves in isolation of society.

You should read some of the old threads in the action newsgroup where
a handful of folks were redefining various terms to mean what they
believed them to mean according to them.  Luckily I've got most of
them kill-filed.  Kill filing is a nice tool to have in the kit when
dealing with Usenet game related newsgroups.

Tanzen <waldby...@yahoo.com> looked up from reading the entrails of
the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs say:

>I think everybody knows software piracy is wrong.

Possibly.

The problem in the current discussion about the CD Projekt guy is that
if copying software isn't illegal, it isn't piracy.

That's kind of the point here, Piracy is the illegal copying of software
- if it's legal, it's not piracy.

See also the historical difference between a Pirate and a Privateer, a
Privateer was basically a Pirate with a government license to pirate the
shipping of the enemies of that country.

The other problem is morals/ethics vs law.

Sometimes the law is unethical: IE the stoning to death of a rape
_victim_ in some Muslim countries because she had "committed adultery".

Did you know you can be arrested in eleven states in the USA for getting
a blowjob, from your wife, in your own home, because blowjobs are
illegal.  Land of the free, eh?
Now where I am I can get a blowjob perfectly legally.
If I visit one of those states, should they be allowed to apply their
law to me for an "offense" that didn't happen in their jurisdiction?
(Incidentally those laws were enacted for "moral" reasons - same as the
Virginia fornication law that made it illegal to have sex in Virginia
with anyone you weren't married to - struck down in 2008.)
That's exactly the case of the CD Projekt guy - what he did was legal
where he did it, even if it was illegal elsewhere.


If the latest version of some software doesn't work for a lot of people
and the company refuses to make earlier versions available because they
don't make enough profit on it, is it completely unethical to make that
earlier version available?
What if that software is a matter of life and death for the users?
How about books that the publishers refuse to republish even though
people want to BUY them.

Laws
-----------------

Big ass gray area

-----------------
Ethics/Morals

People say Piracy is unethical because it's stealing, except it's
stealing that doesn't actually remove the property from the owners.
They _might_ be losing revenue, but it has never been established that a
user of pirated software would have bought the software if he/she
couldn't pirate it - in a lot of cases they could never have afforded it
in the first place.

Joe can't afford to buy the software, Joe pirates the software - did the
software owner actually lose anything?
The owner isn't paying for cd/dvd creation for Joe's copy, nor
distribution costs, authentication server costs, bandwidth costs, tech
support costs, etc, nor has he lost a potential sale since Joe can't
afford to buy the software in the first place.

You might also consider the effect of piracy on the cost to you the
buyer.

Due to rampant piracy, software sellers charge about HALF as much in
Russia as they do in North America and Western Europe.
Thanks to the pirates, the legit buyers over there are getting a massive
break in cost.

They _can't_ charge as much as they'd like or people will just use the
pirated version and they make almost no sales.  

Funny how that works: charge more than people can afford and they'll
pirate, make it affordable and they'll buy.

Consider the effect on North American piracy if those prices were
charged here.

Xocyll