[Gllug] Piracy.

[Rich Walker]

David Damerell <damerell at chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:

> On Tuesday, 4 Mar 2003, Martin A. Brooks wrote:
> >This is a poor argument.
> 
> I presume you are referring to what you present yourself.
> 
> >There is no discussion here: using unlicensed software is theft. It's no 
> >different to ripping stereos out of cars or stealing purses and wallets in 
> >a nightclub.
> 
> This is untrue, as the posting you replied to pointed out adequately.

I think there's a point that's being missed.

Copyright law is mostly established by commercial interests, able to pay
politicians to establish the law they want (Privilege == private law).

Copying software reduces the ability of companies to make money from
selling the basic artifact.

Because the company has a profit model based around unit sales volume,
and because most management is unable to consider changing a successful
but threatened model, the Other Strategy is used to deal with a threat
to the business model.

Hence, legal and PR teams are used to protect the existing model - and
are backed by the profits of the model.

Legal teams create/enforce laws to sustain the current model.

PR teams make the people who do not accept the current model look bad.

The classic example of this is the use of a word that refers to a crime
in which rape, pillage, theft, torture and murder is commonly
committed, to refer to an activity containing none of these.

Talk about loading the argument.


(In case anyone thinks the model would be in some way sacrosanct, I
refer you to the high levels of illicit copying of, for example, CAM
software, ERP software and the like - not only are people happy to pay
for it, they're happy to *keep* paying for it, because they are buying
developer time targetted at their particular problem)

My take on RMS is that he watched the companies come in, develop a
business model around exploiting the work of people in the AI Lab and
other places, destroy the culture around that, "make a barren wasteland
and call it peace"; and then they turned around and re-defined the
pre-existing culture as "piracy".

You can kind of see why he might feel that this was a bad thing.

cheers, Rich.


> 
> -- 
> David Damerell <damerell at chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
> 
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