david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- Resident E-mail Hack) (01/19/88)
Pardon the wide distribution, but 1) this is one of those sweeping
subjects that affects everyone, and 2) it doesn't cost the net anything
extra to cross post. If you follow up, please make sure and include
all the newsgroups in the follow-up ... I don't read most of the
newsgroups listed above.
Anyway ... in comp.sys.amiga right now we've got this discussion
going on about the evils of software piracy. It started (I think)
in a discussion about a particular virus that's hit the Amiga world
and propogates itself into the boot blocks of disks. But that's
not important right now.
There have been a number of statements on both sides of the issue
about copying software. It's easy to do and gives people free
software; it's evil and raises software costs; keeps companies from
investing efforts and money into a product; ad nauseum. I'm sure
you've heard the arguments before.
But really ... what is the BEST solution? This problem exists
in a greater context than just computer software. It exists
in the music industry, movies, books, databases, and so forth.
The point is that this technology we've been building has
made it ridiculously easy to make duplicates of things. The
technology has even become good enough that we can now make
duplicates that are as good as the originals. And going further
(beyond what I want to cover right now) we can even muck with
our duplicate and add in new things or change what's there.
Such a context destroys the assumptions which surrounded the
design of our patent/copyright law. Namely that the difficulty
in making duplicates of things behooved would-be publishers
to obtain the help of the author before doing the publishing.
Regardless of how you feel about yourselves ... you may be very
upright moral people and would never think about violating
intellectual property rights ... there are people out in the
world who feel differently about these things. It's their
computer and they don't want to give control over it to
some other program/they don't see the point of paying $100
for a floppy disk/they like getting away with whatever they
can possibly get away with/whatever.
This is a subject which comes up repeatadly. There is no
solution within the current rules of patent/copyright law
because there is no possible enforcement. (And don't tell
me about copy protection schemes ... I have never seen one
which did not leave as good a product afterwards ... i.e.
you either have a more difficult product to use, or it's
buggier ... This even applies to other media, books printed
in blue so they can't be xerox'd, vhs tapes with macrovision
encoding that makes the picture a little bit worse and doesn't
even work in all vhs players, the proposed copy protection
for DAT tapes that'd take out a notch from the audio spectrum
needlessly, ad nauseum)
Please ... I plea for one of two things.
Either 1) you shut up 'cause the subject has already been haggled
out in many newsgroups already nobody has come up with
a satisfactory solution.
2) You come up with something original to add.
People who are interested in where I'm coming from read:
The various writings of Richard Stallman about the Free Software
Foundation.
The July '85 issue of Whole Earth Review. It's the one with
the picture on the front of 3 flying saucers flying through
downtown San Francisco, and has a couple of articles about
digital retouching of photography. The article raises most
of the points I'm thinking about right now.
A book by Stewart Brand called _The_Media_Lab_. You'll find
it in your local book sellers ... it's non fiction, black cover,
a white light holography on the front cover. The book is
about the MIT Media Lab and the work they're doing with making
a new media and re-designing how people live with technology
and so forth. It's also made me really want to work in the
media lab for awhile ... :-)
I don't see how the current system can continue functioning
for very long. Some new sort of software (and other intellectual
property) distribution system will have to be constructed
before very long. Possibly as part of the coming economic
crash which will likely be here after the elections?
Shareware was a good idea in this regard.
--
<---- David Herron -- The E-Mail guy <david@ms.uky.edu>
<---- or: {rutgers,uunet,cbosgd}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET
<----
<---- It takes more than a good memory to have good memories.tower@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Leonard H. Tower Jr.) (01/26/88)
In article <39450@sun.uucp> fiddler%concertina@Sun.COM (Steve Hix) writes: ... |The GNU people (particularly Mr. Stallman) might not continue with |their idealistic ways if they had no other source of income beside |the software that they're working on. A poster who doesn't the facts. RMS (Mr. Stallman) has made his living as a consultant since he started the GNU project. He has always required all work that he does to be freely redistributable, and takes a copy of the work he performs as a consultant with him when he is done with an assingment. Note also that more and more of the consulting that he is paid for is GNU related. Proof of concept?!?!!!! enjoy -len PS: People who are concerned with this issue of software copying, should study RMS' GNU Manifesto. It was published in the March 1985 issue of Dr. Dobbs, is file etc/GNU in the GNU Emacs distribution [ C-h C-c C-x C-v GNU RET ], and as a last resort is available via e-mail from: ucbvax!prep.ai.mit.edu!gnu the Project GNU e-mail inquiry address.