NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/comp/sys/mac/programm/21915

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-21 | 1.8 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Tim Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Why the Piracy? Here's why...
Date: 22 Jan 1993 00:50:39 GMT
Organization: University of Washington School of Law, Class of '95
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Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <tal691.727518516@huxley> <[e-mail]> <tal691.727611521@huxley>
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[e-mail] (Tonio Loewald) writes:
>Look, musicians get royalties on their CDs, but not on illegal recordings
>of their CDs. This is a very important (and simple) point which you seem
>not to get. The difference is that money (stolen from a bank) is a scarce
>resource. Ie. if I take yours, you can't spend it. Information is not
>a scarce resource. If I take yours, you can keep it.

Software, however, is generally used for purposes of making money.  If you and
I are competing for contracts, and you are pirating your tools, and I am not,
you get to charge less, and get the contracts.  I either have to start
pirating too, thus depriving the tool maker of a sale, or I get out of the
contracting business, and thus have no need for tools, and thus again you
have deprived the tool maker of a sale.

For non-productive software, such as games, you are also hurting someone
when you pirate.  Let's say you pirate game X, because you can't afford
it (it sells for $100).  I write game Y, which sells for $10, which you
can afford.  However, you are playing game X.  You don't have time to play
game Y, so you don't buy my game.  If you had not pirated game X, you might
have bought game Y.  Your piracry has taken away $10 that you would have spent
on me if you had not been a pirate.

--Tim Smith