cs2531bn@charon.unm.edu (Lazlo Nibble) (03/17/88)
[The original for this was crossposted to virtually every micro-related group on the net. I've moved it down to comp.sys.misc, and hope to hell it stays here. In fact, why don't you just resist the temptation to even respond to this article and save us all a lot of grief? :-)] > I've been noticing talk about pirated software lately over the net. Well, > I think it shouldn't exist, but it's something we've had for a very long > time. ...and which is not going be completely eradicated, EVER. A fact of life that a lot of people should sit back and think about. (I'm not saying they should stop trying to stop it, just get a perspective. It's a lot easier to try and stamp out one brand or another of evil than to try and wipe out all the evil in the world.) > Anyways, what I think stores should do, is not let the lookers use the > computers themselves, unless the store owners and salesmen know that person > very very good. This would prevent much of the pirating that is going on > right now. In the "piracy in the store" case that's been bandied around here recently, this would make no difference whatsoever. The people doing the pirating are the store's employees, and they're doing it (apparently) with the full knowledge of the management. > About pirating over the modem . . . I think one way that we could get the > pirating issue to go over is by not allowing anyone below age 35 buy a modem. > The reason I say such a high age is I know some people between 20 and 35 that > still pirate. See, most of the piraters out there are kids between the ages > of 15 to 20. The biggest pirates I know of are all over 40. Where do you think the money comes from that pays for the 100+ megabyte hard drives the big pirate BBSes are run on? From their day jobs! If anyone wants to stop modem pirating (and thereby seriously slow things from where they are today, which is that every pirate in the country has Ultima V within three days of its release) they're going to have to TRY to stop it. To date, nobody really has. There are quite literally hundreds of pirate boards in the country, and they operate with impunity, and will continue to do so until someone in the software industry decides it's worth their while to try and get them all shut down. I have a feeling that they've all weighed the cost of doing this vs. the losses they feel from piracy and have decided it's not worth the time and trouble. Lords knows that they've had plenty of opportunity. > Anyways, thanks for the attention, and I just wanted to > give my little soapbox on pirating. Phillip Keen Lazlo Nibble (cs2531bn@charon.unm.edu)