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Subject: Re: Where do we stand?

Author: Vine Smith

Date: 17:57:46 04/08/01

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On April 08, 2001 at 18:31:55, Uri Blass wrote:

>On April 08, 2001 at 16:45:11, Vine Smith wrote:
>
>>Well, I'm surprised that some people are actually openly defending the
>>downloading of an obviously illegal version of a commercial program.
>
>obviously?
>
>I disagree.
>
>It is not a clear case like downloading an illegal version of a new program and
>nobody is interesting in buying the programs at that site.
>
>I believe that programmers like richard lang lost nothing from the fact that
>people downloaded old programs like Genius2 so it make sense to think that
>richard lang agreed to make it free.
>
>This thought may be wrong but I do not see a reason to be sure that it is wrong.
>
>Uri

Don't you think if Lang didn't mind free distribution of old Chess Genius
versions, he would offer one or more as a download at his site (which only
offers the trial version of Genius for Palm OS)? Also, some vendors still sell
old versions at fairly low prices -- I saw a package "Chess Genius Gold", which
contains versions 1-5. I doubt Lang will starve to death because some obscure
site is allowing downloads of CG2, which maybe could account for a maximum $100
lost income, and I suppose if I had little or no money, I might be tempted, but
then again, why? Is free Crafty, Little Goliath, etc. not good enough? The
hundreds of free Winboard engines don't provide enough variety? And I really
think it's very risky -- download enough "hacked" programs, and one day, after
seeing the message "Loading", a little popup will appear saying "HA! HA! HA!
Your drive erased courtesy of SUPER-PHREAK!" or something similarly
entertaining.



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