Subject: downloading software
From: Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Date: Fri Jun 29 2001 - 03:30:36 GMT
"lray" recently wrote here:
>realplayer is a decent program but if anyone is interested in d/l the full
>version without paying for it they may find it at http://etc.
I don't want to sound like a prune-faced old fart, and this isn't
aimed solely at lray, but at *anyone* who might be inclined to post
pointers here to sites that dish out illegal copies of software.
(Called "warez" or other juicy names by people who do this for kicks.)
If you think about it for a moment, there are a couple of issues
going on here that I would like to point out. This is a list devoted
to a writer most of us admire, and I suspect we all would agree that
old Jerry, like any writer, should be paid for the work he writes and
sells, and that we read.
I'm sure that most of us wouldn't consider walking into a bookstore
and stealing a copy of a book we would like to have, when it's out
there for sale. (And I'm making a very clear distinction between
this and the course we take when we go, say, to libraries or other
sources looking for the "underpublished" stories that are not
available for us to buy, because Salinger has made the conscious
decision not to make them available for sale. Once, in his more
commercial days, he made them available for sale in magazines, and
it's completely legitimate for us to engage in the leg-work to gather
together the material he published in various commercial forums.
Hence the notion of "fair use," which is law in many parts of the
world and which pertains to written works we can't go out and neatly
pluck off a bookstore shelf.)
But -- alley oop, DIGRESSION! -- this is what happens when you
download commercial software that has been tampered with such that
you can snag yourself a copy without paying for it. You get the
software. The author of the software (and some such authors are real
people like you and me, not faceless entities we like to disparage,
like Microsoft) gets nothing. There is nothing fair about THAT.
There are avenues by which people who want to give their software
away can do so. There are also shareware distributions, where you
pay a nominal fee for the software, and you get working software
while the author of the software gets a small amount of money.
[Try doing a search at www.google.com using the keywords "copyright
warez legal" (leave out the quotation marks!) and browse through the
results to get an idea of the story. You can also try "shareware
legality" (again, leave the quotation marks out); one such site that
does a decent job of tackling the definitions is at
home.bigblue.no/ek/ekbackup/shareware.html]
"Warez" sites -- such as the one cited that has the copy of the
RealAudio software -- are none of the above. They are designed for
the illicit distribution of software for which you will not have to
pay. Here in the U.S. that is a criminal act, and it is also a
criminal act in other countries that enforce laws about software
ownership and payment. Please do not post information about "warez"
sites to the bananafish list. It is a violation in spirit and, in
many places around the world, of laws that govern matters like
software patents and copyright.
One can argue endlessly about it, but the law is what it is, and the
ethics of the situation are what they are. It's theft, plain and
simple. Just because it's an intangible item being stolen does not
make it any more acceptable; it's still theft. And to be
uncharacteristically blunt, I'm not interested in debating the matter
here or privately. I see it as business that has been resolved and
settled and put to rest.
I only ask politely that you keep it out of this forum. If you
privately want to share information about this stuff, it's your
personal business. Take it off the list to private mail and leave us
out of it and hope you don't get caught by a cranky law-enforcement
agent or an Internet Service Provider who wants to make your life
unpleasant.
Don't engage in "warez" distribution on the list, and you'll be doing
all of us, including yourself, a big favor.
Thanks for listening. It's not a trivial matter, and if you engage
in it, you only perpetuate the problem, helping nobody at all except
yourself and other people who cheat software owners out of rightful
income. That's not acceptable here.
--tim o'connor
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