Stealing Software 2!

[ATIRAGEPRO]

"Fair enough..."

Fair enough.

I am not telling you that you should care one way or the other, that is a moral decision that you must decide for yourself. I am simply saying that stealing is wrong.

As for sides, I don't have one. I steal (music), but that is my decision. I know it's wrong, I am not asking anyone to forgive me, or to do what I do. I simply would like for people to understand that just because you want something doesn't make it right, no matter your reasons, to steal.

I would be a hypocrite if I said, "You shouldn't steal because it is wrong", while I sit here and write that I steal. Which I haven't said at all. I didn't say that anyone shouldn't or should steal, I just said that stealing is wrong.

I got it; You're just putting the facts out there. Stealing is wrong weather or not you beleive it's right or not. And even though you may fool yourself into beleiving it, it dosn't make it any different.-I get it.

But i can't help but stick by my beleifs that stealing software is right in some cases. But people might take it the wrong way and use it for every time they see something they want. Which turns it into MOST cases. That part is wrong, but i dont wantanyone to generalize this, so i'll say this: If you REALY SERIOSLEY need it, and you CANT afford it, Hack it. No doubt about it....

 

[winblowz]

last statement

Anyway, it's been an interesting debate. I think it's really cool when members can discuss and not flame. Good job! My conclusion is that "stealing is wrong" no matter what we say to try and justify our acts.

Dave

yeah! It's been fun discussing this topic. Thanks Guy! Thanks every one else. After reading all of this, I really hope that you take into account all of the positions of this debate next time you go to download a crack---

Al

 

[Apokalipse]

the way I see it, there are 2 categories of 'laws' that all of mankind follow: one is the "legal" and one is the "physical" and conflict can occur between these laws

just say you legally have to do [some law], but you can't because physically it is not possible to do so

the problem is, it is not possible to break the laws of physics but it is physically possible to break the legal laws, and when conflict like this occurs it can only go one way

 

[nak-1]

In a modern capitalist society software stealing is wrong for only one reason.

In order to make money we have a right to exploit our own intellectual property, ie. if I make it I am the one that is allowed to make money off it. Nowadays corporations hold most of the intellectual property. This is partly because of the cost of bringing a product to the market and partly because many modern things require teams of people to dream up and implement.

Stealing takes away that right. In terms of software theft you are essentially stealing someones intellectual property, mainly because you don't have to steal a disk etc. to get it. Hence it works in aexactly the same way as music copyright.

This means that stealing a car in the eyes of the law is very diferent from stealing a copy of windows.

Because a corporation has no personality we can sympathise with most people feel quite justified in stealing a product because they rationalise that there is going to be no emotional impact on a given person. Think about how we learn its wrong to steal from someone, it's normally by being shown the impact it has on the person you stole from, well it is if your parents are any good at their job...

The point to note here is that copyright is not a moral issue. It is a right enshrined by law. Take the nusiness model that music industry, oh so sloooowwwly. is coming round to, ie. that allowing some free or near free distribution of there product actually increases sales of thei main read winner, albums. This is a perfectly accetable way to market and exploit your product, think of all the free samples you find in supermarkets? Stupid music industry if you ask me...

The media surrounding software companies doesn't help the situation.They vey rarely engage the public with about the critisisms of their products, engage in monopolistic practises and are mostly governed by megolmanic personalities, read gates, jobs et al. they are so obsessed with their own vision of how company is going to move forward that that is the only way possible.

Take Gates, most people think he's a **** (substitue your own expletive, I have many..) primarily because he has taken exploitation of his product as exploitation of the people he makes it for. ie. he's no longer just selling software he's selling an intial product and then charging you more when it doesn't work quite the way you expected it to, or the next generation of computer means he can convieniently produce new software that takes advantage of power and features that 99% of users don't need at all.

The fact is that the largest growth of sales in software and hardware is in the enterprise market. These customers don't steal because their accounting has to be ransparent, they are also reliant on the support that is needed with the software and hardware because if it goes down they lose money and they can't afford not to.

Most software stealing is perpetrated by home users who don't want to pay $600+ for something like Phototshop to mess around with graphics at home. But at the end of the day this doesn't really matter to the big corporations. Why? you may shout, because the average home user is not going to make any money out of using this product. Taking out law suits against these people will be very expensive and the corporation would be unlikely to see very much money back as the average software stealing, most probably a teenager, will not be able to afford to pay them anything, would probably end up paying a dollar a week for the rest of their lives...

Opensource addresses the problems of software theft by making the software free, it also encourages user participation. This means you are much more likely to get the features you want and the bug fixes that matter. Problem is it relies on developers being interested and motivated in what you want, if their not you won't get the software.

at the end of the day, if you are a home user and are not making money out of using a piece of commercial software their will probably be absolutly no consequence to stealing software. Hence with no learning experience to tell you its 'morally wrong' people will jusitfy it with whatever pops into their head.

 

[Cogwork]

Not a justification as such, but pirating computer software differes from car theft and similar in that you're just making a copy of the program - it's reproduction costs essentially nothing. As Nik said above.

 

[winblowz]

reproduction is free... But it is still, as defined by many other users, incorrect and unjustifiable by any means.
winblowz