40 ms·

I think that misses the point. Suppose someone is selling clay pottery. They bought a machine to help them make it, but the clay itself is freely available.

by tjr 18y ago

I think that misses the point. Suppose someone is selling clay pottery. They bought a machine to help them make it, but the clay itself is freely available. They just go down to the riverbed and grab a heap of clay. You could go get the very same clay. It's free; it's a public resource. We'll even say there is infinite clay. Now then. The producer is using a totally free resource to produce clay pots. It takes a few hours to make each one, and they are very nice. But the only material in the product is a free resource. If you were to steal the pots without paying for them, the producer isn't out anything, because the producer can just go get more clay; no big deal. You've taken no money, you've taken no food. All you've taken is a clay pot, made out of a substance of which the producer has an infinite supply. Is it okay to steal the pot?

ajkirwin 18y ago
No. Because the producer isn't, once he's made his Clay Pot 1.0, simply using a replicator to run off infinite copies of it. But if he WAS, then yeah, it'd be fine, providing you had no way to getting the pots yourself.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
awad 18y ago
his time, effort, and skill DO have a value, so no.
- jbjohns 18y ago
  What are you saying? The creators of games don't have a value? Ok then, let them know that so they can all stop producing them. It's a terrible shame to have so many people devoted to something that creates no value for anyone.
  - tjr 18y ago
    That's exactly what I was trying to get across. I thought an analogy might help, albeit an imperfect one. To replicate a computer game is trivial, but when buying a computer game, one is not so much paying for the replicated copy of the software as one is paying for the time and expenses that went into producing it in the first place. A lot of people do give software away for free, but that's their choice.
    - jbjohns 18y ago
      Yea, I got what you meant and thought it was pretty obvious personally. What some of these guys don't seem to get is when you buy something physical you pay for the whole thing, production costs and all, right in one go (or if it's too expensive for that you make payments). When you buy media of most any kind you don't because few could afford to pay what it cost to produce. Instead the total cost is kind shared between lots of people. We all sort of pay a percentage. So just like in brick & morter stores: when someone starts stealing product they push price up for everyone else.
    - qw 18y ago
      I have to be clear that I do not use unlicensed software. I also think that people should not use the software, if they can't afford it. But I don't agree that all pirated copies are lost sales. Some of them might be of course, but you can't expect that each copy is a lost sale. Let's use MS Office as an example. Here there is a free alternative (Open Office) that does most of what normal users needs. But the piracy level is very high. This is (originally) a product made for businesses, that most home users certainly don't need. You don't think that most homes would spend $399 on MS Office if MS made it more difficult to copy? The reason why schools expects reports to be delivered as Word-documents is because it is implied that parents will have a copy of MS Office. This can only work because software can be pirated. If the parents had to spend $399, all schools would accept ODF documents, because there is usually at least one person connected to the school who knows that a free alternative is available. BTW: "Piracy" is a word that the companies used (probably advised by a PR company), so that it will seem worse. It has worked out very well for them, even the "pirates" use that word. Perhaps I should use a similar strategy against the things I dislike... I will from this day forward interpret DRM as "Digital Rape Model" :-) Copying software is not stealing. It is not legal or (in most cases) ethical, it is it's own form of crime. It may be difficult to define, but calling it "stealing" is not right, You might as well say that I will steal a potential sale, if I write a false negative fact about a product. It is wrong, but I doubt you can call it stealing.
carbon8 18y ago
As always, this kind analogy doesn't apply to digital copies. For the analogy to work each digital copy would need to be recoded from scratch by the original developer.

by tjr 18y ago

ajkirwin 18y ago

No. Because the producer isn't, once he's made his Clay Pot 1.0, simply using a replicator to run off infinite copies of it. But if he WAS, then yeah, it'd be fine, providing you had no way to getting the pots yourself.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

awad 18y ago

his time, effort, and skill DO have a value, so no.

jbjohns 18y ago
What are you saying? The creators of games don't have a value? Ok then, let them know that so they can all stop producing them. It's a terrible shame to have so many people devoted to something that creates no value for anyone.
- tjr 18y ago
  That's exactly what I was trying to get across. I thought an analogy might help, albeit an imperfect one. To replicate a computer game is trivial, but when buying a computer game, one is not so much paying for the replicated copy of the software as one is paying for the time and expenses that went into producing it in the first place. A lot of people do give software away for free, but that's their choice.
  - jbjohns 18y ago
    Yea, I got what you meant and thought it was pretty obvious personally. What some of these guys don't seem to get is when you buy something physical you pay for the whole thing, production costs and all, right in one go (or if it's too expensive for that you make payments). When you buy media of most any kind you don't because few could afford to pay what it cost to produce. Instead the total cost is kind shared between lots of people. We all sort of pay a percentage. So just like in brick & morter stores: when someone starts stealing product they push price up for everyone else.
  - qw 18y ago
    I have to be clear that I do not use unlicensed software. I also think that people should not use the software, if they can't afford it. But I don't agree that all pirated copies are lost sales. Some of them might be of course, but you can't expect that each copy is a lost sale. Let's use MS Office as an example. Here there is a free alternative (Open Office) that does most of what normal users needs. But the piracy level is very high. This is (originally) a product made for businesses, that most home users certainly don't need. You don't think that most homes would spend $399 on MS Office if MS made it more difficult to copy? The reason why schools expects reports to be delivered as Word-documents is because it is implied that parents will have a copy of MS Office. This can only work because software can be pirated. If the parents had to spend $399, all schools would accept ODF documents, because there is usually at least one person connected to the school who knows that a free alternative is available. BTW: "Piracy" is a word that the companies used (probably advised by a PR company), so that it will seem worse. It has worked out very well for them, even the "pirates" use that word. Perhaps I should use a similar strategy against the things I dislike... I will from this day forward interpret DRM as "Digital Rape Model" :-) Copying software is not stealing. It is not legal or (in most cases) ethical, it is it's own form of crime. It may be difficult to define, but calling it "stealing" is not right, You might as well say that I will steal a potential sale, if I write a false negative fact about a product. It is wrong, but I doubt you can call it stealing.

carbon8 18y ago

As always, this kind analogy doesn't apply to digital copies. For the analogy to work each digital copy would need to be recoded from scratch by the original developer.