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Listen, I agree with you in spirit, but it's not practical. Here's what I have no problem with: Let's say foo is 15 and he wants to download Super Expensive P

by palish 19y ago

Listen, I agree with you in spirit, but it's not practical. Here's what I have no problem with: Let's say foo is 15 and he wants to download Super Expensive Program 9000. He spends all day looking for a torrent. Then, once he's downloaded it, the next day it takes him another full day to figure out how to install it and get the various cracks working and everything configured. Right, that's fine. Here's the problem: Time passes, foo's grown up. He's 25, and a software engineer, making $75k a year. He goes to thepiratebay.org and finds Super Expensive Program 9000 immediately. He downloads it in about an hour. It installs immediately with no requirement to apply a crack or any other technical detail. It just installs and works. Okay, I have a problem with the second one, because once piracy becomes a one-click solution it starts to hurt those that make the program. The first isn't a problem because 15 year olds don't buy programs anyway, but they might buy it when they grow up (Like I did with Visual Assist). If there's a way to make it artificially hard to get something for free, I say let them get it, because only the committed will be able to. If it's easy (Napster, ThePirateBay, etc) it needs to be made harder. Also, making money by giving away people's work for free in a one-click solution is just evil. If you're going to give it away for free, make it hard, and don't make any money from it.

byrneseyeview 19y ago
You've talked about the consequence (programmers make less money), but you haven't defended your status quo. Another way to phrase your statement is "Barring market manipulation, Super Expensive Program 9000 isn't worth writing." Which should explain everything.
- palish 19y ago
  Er.. What? The developer can price it at whatever he wants. If no competition exists, that price can be very high. That's not manipulation, that's capitalism.
  - randallsquared 19y ago
    The Pirate Bay is competition, once he's given away or sold the first copy.
    - palish 19y ago
      Taking someone's work and repackaging it as free without paying the owner is stealing, not competition.
      - randallsquared 19y ago
        I agree, sort of. (Surprised?) If someone broke into the owner's house or office and copied their work, then clearly a crime has taken place. However, in the vast majority of cases, the owner gives or sells a copy to someone, and a descendant of that copy is what ends up being repackaged or copied for free. In this case, the problem was not that someone "took someone's work and repackaged it as free", but that the owner already sold the work. The idea that the owner can sell something and still own it is simply at odds with digital copying. No law will change this, but it's apparently harder to communicate than King Canute's point about the tide was. :)
rms 19y ago
Piracy HAS become one-click easy because information is not scarce anymore. The fifteen your old of today that you think should be able to pirate software has no choice but to download it in a ridiculously easy manner. There's no turning back now, unless there's an international movement to start policing the internet which involves cutting off countries that have been declared piracy havens from the rest of the internet. This, of course, contradicts the principles of the internet. I'm too much of a moral relativist to think the Pirate Bay is evil. Stalin was evil. George W. Bush is evil. Making something people want (one click access to free information) is not evil. Laws are not inherently good and violating laws is not inherently evil. I'll admit that it's not practical for all information to suddenly be free, but in the long run, information will be free. In the meanwhile, people like you and me get to argue about how free our information should be. This debate is part of the process of freeing our information.
- palish 19y ago
  Okay. So for someone like me, in a position where I have very little money and I want to get out of that situation, to hear "Whatever people make should be free" is just silly. Yes, open source is wonderful, and I really want to contribute to it. But needing to feed myself everyday and to pay for my car and a place to live takes precedence. Would you tell PG that Viaweb should've been free? Why? Because it's a service? There's no fundamental difference between a service and a piece of desktop software, except you can't steal it.
  - rms 19y ago
    You summed it up yourself. The fundamental difference between a service and a piece of desktop software is that you can't steal it. In a society where everyone has access to free software and an internal moral compass is the only thing that deters us from piracy, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to release desktop software with no service component.
    - palish 19y ago
      You summed it up yourself. Stealing desktop software is just that: stealing. Continue to steal other people's work (obviously nothing will change your mind), but don't lie to yourself by thinking it's not stealing. It is.

by palish 19y ago

byrneseyeview 19y ago

You've talked about the consequence (programmers make less money), but you haven't defended your status quo. Another way to phrase your statement is "Barring market manipulation, Super Expensive Program 9000 isn't worth writing." Which should explain everything.

palish 19y ago
Er.. What? The developer can price it at whatever he wants. If no competition exists, that price can be very high. That's not manipulation, that's capitalism.
- randallsquared 19y ago
  The Pirate Bay is competition, once he's given away or sold the first copy.
  - palish 19y ago
    Taking someone's work and repackaging it as free without paying the owner is stealing, not competition.
    - randallsquared 19y ago
      I agree, sort of. (Surprised?) If someone broke into the owner's house or office and copied their work, then clearly a crime has taken place. However, in the vast majority of cases, the owner gives or sells a copy to someone, and a descendant of that copy is what ends up being repackaged or copied for free. In this case, the problem was not that someone "took someone's work and repackaged it as free", but that the owner already sold the work. The idea that the owner can sell something and still own it is simply at odds with digital copying. No law will change this, but it's apparently harder to communicate than King Canute's point about the tide was. :)

rms 19y ago

Piracy HAS become one-click easy because information is not scarce anymore. The fifteen your old of today that you think should be able to pirate software has no choice but to download it in a ridiculously easy manner. There's no turning back now, unless there's an international movement to start policing the internet which involves cutting off countries that have been declared piracy havens from the rest of the internet. This, of course, contradicts the principles of the internet. I'm too much of a moral relativist to think the Pirate Bay is evil. Stalin was evil. George W. Bush is evil. Making something people want (one click access to free information) is not evil. Laws are not inherently good and violating laws is not inherently evil. I'll admit that it's not practical for all information to suddenly be free, but in the long run, information will be free. In the meanwhile, people like you and me get to argue about how free our information should be. This debate is part of the process of freeing our information.

palish 19y ago
Okay. So for someone like me, in a position where I have very little money and I want to get out of that situation, to hear "Whatever people make should be free" is just silly. Yes, open source is wonderful, and I really want to contribute to it. But needing to feed myself everyday and to pay for my car and a place to live takes precedence. Would you tell PG that Viaweb should've been free? Why? Because it's a service? There's no fundamental difference between a service and a piece of desktop software, except you can't steal it.
- rms 19y ago
  You summed it up yourself. The fundamental difference between a service and a piece of desktop software is that you can't steal it. In a society where everyone has access to free software and an internal moral compass is the only thing that deters us from piracy, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to release desktop software with no service component.
  - palish 19y ago
    You summed it up yourself. Stealing desktop software is just that: stealing. Continue to steal other people's work (obviously nothing will change your mind), but don't lie to yourself by thinking it's not stealing. It is.