cw (07/30/82)
Will Martin suggests that the government (in the form of the FBI) should not help prosecute copyright violation cases. I wonder how he would feel if he were running a small software house selling one (his own baby) copyrighted program and a great big company with resources far outstripping his own stole his program. What if the cost of collecting evidence were enough in itself to bankrupt poor Will's company? Should the large miscreant therefore go unpunished? Not likely, I'm sure you'll agree. And I would not like to defend the FBI in general. But the view that government should not meddle in our daily lives just won't wash when the actions of somebody thousands of miles away and out of any effective reach of our individual powers can change our lives dramatically. Remember the big multi-national companies that even governments seem to have some trouble controlling. Let me suggest that neither narrow libertarianism nor rampant Big Brotherism s is quite the answer to the problems of a large, technological society. By the way, it is ludicrous to think of the lack of sophistication shown by FBI types who are after computers by reading bulletin boards. Charles