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Subject: Stealing chess software is unjustifiable theft

Author: Peter Klausler

Date: 09:35:20 07/21/98

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On July 20, 1998 at 13:40:55, Enrique Irazoqui wrote:
>The example I gave before: I am sure many of us use the same operating system
>running on several computers. How many of us bought a copy of this operating
>system for every computer we have? I guess few of us or even no one. Does this
>make thieves (your expression) out of all of us?

1) You can't justify your theft by claiming that it's common.
2) All of my software is legal.  I'm not a thief.
3) Stealing chess software is particularly crass in the face of
   so much useful freeware for chess.  A chess software thief
   can't even use the lame argument that he can't afford the
   software that he "needs".  Download Crafty, Winboard, and
   CDB and quit whining.
4) Nobody needs to play chess.  One might argue that stealing
   food to feed a starving child is justifiable, but stealing
   software to support a hobby is without any excuse.
5) If there's something you want your computer to do, and you
   can't afford to buy the software that does it, get a free
   compiler and write it yourself.  If you can't do that,
   learn how.  Besides being criminal, software theft is a
   sign of laziness.

Violation of a software license is theft, plain and simple and
no more justifiable than theft of computer hardware.  Run freeware
or write it if you can't buy what you want.  And have some more
respect for those of us who create this stuff.



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