binder@dosadi.DEC (Do not adjust your set...) (04/08/84)
I agree that it is theft to use a pirate descrambler to receive HBO et al. I further agree that if something is floating round in the air I have free access to it. The US Federal Communications Commission, way back in 1934, got an Act passed that asserted the same. And the US Supreme Court, just last year, affirmed the correctness of that Act - whatever signals are in the air are free for the use wf whoever wishes to use them. If they are scrambled, there is a question in my mind re: using that "illegal" de- scrambler, but otherwise they're fair game. The foregoing, however, does not speak to the software piracy issue. It is legal to copyright software. This protection should be the vendor's first line of defence, but the legal system in the US makes it usually not worth the costs to prosecute. The system also makes it virtually impossible to catch anyone at piracy - there are scads of bootleg program copies made and sold or given away, yet no one seems to know where they came from... The real problem revolves round the fact that it is not possible to legislate morality. A thief will be a thief no matter the obstacles. If it gets tougher for thieves, then they'll get cleverer. Part of the problem, as I see it, re: software piracy, is that vendors charge astronomical prices for their products. I admit that developing software is an expensive proposition. But I look at the prices of such vendors as Penguin and Borland International and DSR, Inc., none of which uses any form of copy protection, and then I wonder how I can be expected to spend $400 or $500 for a Pascal that isn't half the match for my $50 copy of TURBO. The above-named vendors have the right idea. Price the stuff high enough to make money, even if only a little, but don't throttle your sales with outlandish charges. I suspect that the companies that do this intelligent pricing will make out in the end, because they'll make up the difference in profit on an individual sale in terms of volume. *pant, pant, I think I ran down...* Dick Binder decvax!decwrl!rhea!dosadi!binder Posted Sunday 8th April 1984, 14:30 Eastern time by DOSADI::BINDER