Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!redstone.interpath.net!hilbert.dnai.com!nic.scruz.net!earth.armory.com!rstevew
From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Software Leasing
Organization: The Armory
Date: Sun, 5 Feb 1995 12:43:29 GMT
Message-ID: <D3J20H.3CG@armory.com>
References: <D2Lv28.JsB@armory.com> <3gbrke$k0a@knot.queensu.ca>
      <D36780.CID@armory.com> <JBYERLY.95Feb1182954@malta.pipeline.com>
Sender: news@armory.com (Usenet News)
Nntp-Posting-Host: deepthought.armory.com
Lines: 129

In article <JBYERLY.95Feb1182954@malta.pipeline.com>,
John A. Byerly <jbyerly@malta.pipeline.com> wrote:
>In article <D36780.CID@armory.com> rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
>writes:
>
>   >   I too find your argument (as well as many of your words) vulgar.  
>   >If you believe your viewpoint (and didn't just feel attacked) you
>   >should have no need for your flaming/swearing comments.  
>   ----------------------------------
>   Any means in the battle for the right is Sacred. Speech of any kind is not
>   something any GOD worth worshipping would object to if it's for the right!!
>   -Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com
>
>Sorry, I must not have been paying attention.  Who is it you are battling?
--------------------------------
Either you or some idiot expressed distaste for my "morals". Presuming this
was a religious critique, I tried to couch my argument in those terms to
see how they'd like a genuine devout techno-liberation-gnostic preaching
right back at them!
-Steve

>   >   While I agree that software should have some evaluation mechanism
>   >to guarantee its worth (I test drive a car before I buy) it does not
>   >justify theft.  The software writer/company has a right to charge as
>   >much as they please because they own it.  If priced too high they
>   >invite no sales or competition from other companies.  Are you 
>   >suggesting that if a product is priced too high you have the right to
>   >steal it?  Maybe if it was oxygen for survival I might entertain you.
>   -----------------------------------
>   How about food? Then after that, how about the right to a job? Then after
>   that a right to a living wage! Then...  In other words, one man's luxury in
>   a pretechnical society is another man's necessity in the current world
>   order. Yes, I AM not only suggsting but DECLARING that it is right and even
>   HOLY and GOD BLESSED to steal things that are needed for equal opportunity
>   to life as others know it!!!
>   -Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com
>
>Did you even read this thread?  Or are you just flinging words?  Shall I come
>and take your computer, car, house, or any other of your possessions?  Using
>your argument, I have just as much right to them as you do.  After all,
>I just have a simple Mac Plus.  Think of all the wonderful things I could
>do with what _you_ have.
-----------------------------------
We could compare what we have. I doubt you'd wish to trade! And that's
hardware. Hardware comes one of a kind as an object. So-called "piracy" of
software is nothing more than the dissemination of information. Done
ethically it costs the author nothing the author would otherwise receive,
as those who copy it wouldn't be able to buy it if it were impossible to
copy! Very different from hardware! I don't see people complaining if
someone made a copy of an IBM out of their own parts!! Also, authors of
software get paid what they get paid. By most critics of my position, the
market then has spoken! If they wished to get rich they should have bought
a Lotto ticket and waited patiently for Ed McMahon like all other losers!
An author deserves fair pay for their work, not an indefinite stipend for a
finite job of programming!
-Steve

>   >   Your argument about the "Real World" sounds like you think that
>   >your not getting your fair share compared to someone who is dishonestly
>   >grabbing something.  It's juvenile to claim that you should do 
>   ------------------------------------
>   Whether I was disadvantaged or not, I would help those who are to steal
>   what they need!
>   -Steve Walz  rstevew@armory.com
>
>Need or want?  I think it would be next to impossible for you to justify a
>_need_ for any piece of software.
------------------------------------
Now in this day and age a person who does not have the opportunity to
develop their skill using a number of software packages is risking their
economic well-being, including food and shelter!! I suppose that you know
lots of homeless people who are computer-learned!?? I doubt it very much!
And the benefit that software copying has produced by encouraging the
greater workplace purchase of licensed software for use by already trained
personal who learned on "illicitly" copied software is not mentioned!
without pirated software we would not and could not have become as computer
literate as we are now, and both the hardware and software manufacturers
and authors of books would all have been adversely affected! Don't
mealy-mouth at ME that the authors do not benefit from piracy! Guess who
once indicated his indifference to private piracy of major programs
packages!: Mr. Microsoft Himself! He cited the same reason *I* just did!
-Steve

>   >something because everyone else does.  I tried that one with my parents
>   ------------------------------------
>   I only claim that people have the right to the same opportunity that
>   everyone else does. The morality of an act is based on the result, nothing
>   more! A genuine good act has a genuinely good outcome. And therefore, the
>   genuine ends REALLY *DO* justify the GENUINE means!
>   -Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com
>
>Unfortunately, narrow-minded people such as yourself fail to take into account
>the byproducts of their actions, which themselves are results.  By stealing
>software, you may help yourself (which you have defined as good), but hurt
>many others in the process.  This does _not_ meet your own definition of a
>good act.
--------------------------------------------
Unfortunately unlearned people such as yourself don't know english well
enough to know when to use words like byproducts! And you've made it clear
that it's you who are narrow-minded, still imagining that software piracy
takes anything from anyone who fairly deserves it! I have already showed
why the free-market forces permit it in their effect on laws and their
enforcement! Laws are enforced only to the degree that people through the
market wish them to be and that tempers the law, which is by itself, as
Mark Twain said, "an ass". Instead it encourages only enforcement of that
which is really important to production pragmatically, and not with boyish
sophomoric idealism such as you display!
-Steve

>   >when I was 14.  Thank goodness they didn't fall for that one.
>   >   I await your intellegent, morally (sp?) founded, objectively 
>   >considered, rebuttal.
>   >
>   >    Steve Gillen (No where near perfect, but unwilling to sink any lower)     
>   -----------------------------------
>   Those who obtain what they need for their equal opportunity do not sink low
>   and do not steal. What they do is protected by God in Heaven! And all of
>   them answer only to GOD, and so do the bastards who hinder them!
>   -Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com
>
>Religious rebuttal withheld (after all, this _is_ comp.software-eng)
>
>JAB
----------------------------------------------
There IS no religious rebuttal, as you have no more proof of the nature or
attitudes of God than *I* do, except for my own deepest self. Why is it
that I suspect you may not have one of those?!
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

