nelson_p@apollo.HP.COM (Peter Nelson) (08/21/90)
Barry Shein posts...
:Copying a $500 software package by buying $5 worth of floppies seems
:to be a situation akin to storing diamonds in open containers in front
:of your house and then demanding the police stand guard lest some
:crook steal them. Certainly the person who stole them committed a
:crime, but if the society responds that perhaps you should store your
:diamonds in some better way is also valid, being as you are obviously
:fully aware of the problem you are creating. And if you cannot come up
:with the solution or find it too expensive (but safes cost money!),
:well, perhaps you are in the wrong business.
True. but in that example there is a recognized and available
means to protect your property.
Consider cattle-stealing in western states. Cattle stealing
has historically been a fairly easy crime to commit. It is
hard to guard thousands of acres of range land. So as a result
historically the response has been to have vigorous enforcement
and very tough sentencing of people who steal cattle. "Frontier
justice" for cattle or horse thieves was no joke.
:
:> There may not BE a solution, or at least one which consumers
:> would accept. It's easy to say they should do "something"
:> but on the other hand, anyone who DOES come up with a good
:> anti-piracy scheme will get disgustingly rich overnight if
:> it cannot be defeated and is also acceptable to the market.
:
:Perhaps there is no solution. So, therefore, we should subsidize the
:profitability of this industry with billions of tax dollars?
I don't think it comes to billions. But obviously we have to
decide how important it is to us to have a viable, commercial
software industry. You might be aware of lots of software
companies which are raking it in and making obscene profits
based on huge margins. But I'm aware of very few such
companies, and even in those the huge profits are usually
*very* transitory. I know lots of software companies which
are only making a few percent and also quite a few who are
in the red. And considering the number of people I know
who have stolen copies of software in their possession, I
don't think the problem is all that minor. From what I've
seen with my own eyes I can certainly believe it when the
software industry claims that it is a significant dent in
their business.
---Peter
nelson_p@apollo.HP.COM (Peter Nelson) (08/21/90)
josh@klaatu.rutgers.edu (J Storrs Hall) posts...
>This, of course, is why the anarchocapitalist scheme is so appealing.
>There *are* no tax dollars, and *all* the costs of doing business are
>brought out in the price of the good. If the software company had to
>pay for its own copy protection both ways, the choice of means would
>be simply an economic calculation--as it should be.
Could you detail what this scheme consists of?
>So I think software is a test case for the future--of everything!
I seldom find myself in agreement with JoSH, but I have to agree
this time.
One of my themes on Usenet has been that the moral and ethical
issues we are fond of debating are going to become even more
dramatic with the technology of the future.
It is entirely conceivable that in, say, 150 years, we might
have machines which are as autonomous and intelligent as humans,
or more so. How will our concepts of "work" and "wealth" be
defined in an economy where there is no need for every, or even
most, or even ANY humans to work? Will we still require people
to work in order to have "money" to live? If we have robots or
computers with creativity and high IQ's, should they have "rights"?
How will we make the transition to such a society without a great
deal of pain and conflict?
It is entirely conceivable that we will understand enough about
genetics and cell-differentiation to program the growth of organs
or whole humans from some DNA. We could grow people in a "test tube",
defining their genetic characteristics arbitrarily. We could create
human bodies, with respiratory, circulatory, digestive, and other
functions, but with only a minimal brain (say without a neocortex).
We could design them so they don't experiance pain or fear (without
a neocortex they won't experience much of anything, anyway). We
could use them for experiments. Would these beings be "human"?
Would they have "rights"? Consider also that retroviruses (such
as the HTLV-I and HTLV-III, the AIDS virus) actually change the DNA
of the host cells. Maybe someday we will be able to create a "tame"
retrovirus which can make arbitrary genetic changes in existing
individuals. "Be all that you can be" will take on a new meaning.
Maybe you could literally become anything. White, black, male,
female, etc. How will we derive a concept of "identity"? (Incidentally,
using a different technique, researchers have already successfully inserted
"marker" genes in human subjects.
I could go on, but my point is that these debates on the ethics and
law of copying software and DAT's are nothing compared to what's
coming next. It's like those little UFO's near the beginning of
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind". Just wait 'til you see
the mother ship!
---Peter
bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) (08/22/90)
From: Peter Nelson > Consider cattle-stealing in western states. Cattle stealing > has historically been a fairly easy crime to commit. It is > hard to guard thousands of acres of range land. So as a result > historically the response has been to have vigorous enforcement > and very tough sentencing of people who steal cattle. "Frontier > justice" for cattle or horse thieves was no joke. I think it's important to distinguish that in a case like this we're talking about perhaps dozens of bad guys, a few incidents per county, and very tangible property (the cattle) etc. There's a difference between "either you have the cow or I do" and vagaries of lost income. In this software issue we're talking about a sizeable percentage of the population, potentially tens of millions of people, being the subject of criminal investigations. Notice the potential damage (confusion, whatever) once we begin to allow the concept of lost income without any loss of tangible property. For example, in the case of Lotus vs Paperback Software we get a case that could be (perhaps unfairly) interpreted as the court putting someone out of business merely because they were a direct, close competitor. They sold the same thing, much as GE and Black and Decker both selling blenders, both with multi-speed controls and clearly both intended to mix foods. One wonders, in fact, why Mr. Coffee (or whoever was first) hasn't managed to sue all the other manufacturers of "electronic drip coffee-makers designed for easy home or office use". Now, yes, I understand the claimed cost of developing all their interfaces etc., and that may even be a valid argument. But the real slippery slope we have to distinguish here is whether or not we can accept, as a general principal, whether anguished cries of competition ought to be responded to with government intervention via various design copyright (etc) laws? You make several "anguished cries", fine, I don't dispute them. I'm just not sure that mere anguished cries of pain (in an economic and business context) justify govt intervention. EMC, a peripherals manufacturer, has recently announced that they are going completely out of the DEC market because there is simply no profit in it any more. Other third-party companies are like to follow. They give various reasons why, all of which could probably be cured (for a few of them anyhow) through legislation. For example, we could legislate that computer manufacturers like DEC maintain strict proprietary controls on their hardware interfaces and severely limit their licensing soas to ensure profitability in the third-party market. Would this be reasonable legislation to enact? > I don't think it comes to billions. But obviously we have to > decide how important it is to us to have a viable, commercial > software industry. That's the real question, do "we" decide? Or more importantly, is it likely that legislating that there must be a healthy software industry will produce the desired results? And healthy for whom? The manufacturers or the customers? You may not be able to get both. For example, if I am given broad monopoly on a particular software concept, say the entire idea of spreadsheets (which I believe at least one company is claiming right now in court! or did recently) wouldn't the best way to run my business be to find a price point where I can obtain a particular income with minimum customers? It certainly can be a lot more profitable to have 100 customers at $100,000/copy than 10,000 customers at $1,000/copy. To sell and service to those 100 customers I probably need only a handful of staff. To sell and service 10,000 customers I probably need at least 10x as many people. Now, you might argue that no one would pay $100K for a spreadsheet, even if I were the only source. Would they pay $10K? $20K? $5K? You can say the same applies to to anything, but it's particularly dicey when the market has been granted relative monopolies and competition has either been eliminated or bullied away (by threat of litigation, I know *I'm* not going into the spread-sheet biz soon, how about you?) The point being that we are now simply in a classic linear-programming problem with the constraints highly biased (via govt intervention) towards minimizing my customer base and maximizing my cost. I don't know, but we have to be careful with the consequences of answering anguished cries of pain with copious and regular doses of state-supplied morphine, no matter how our hearts feel. -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | {xylogics,uunet}!world!bzs | bzs@world.std.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) (08/23/90)
In article <9008212119.AA10338@world.std.com> bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes: > For example, in the case of Lotus vs Paperback Software we get a case > that could be (perhaps unfairly) interpreted as the court putting > someone out of business merely because they were a direct, close > competitor. I think (to borrow a term from Barry Shein) that it is important to distinguish between the software piracy issue and look-n-feel copyrights. 'nuff said. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' +1 713 274 5180. 'U` peter@ferranti.com