Author: Fernando Villegas
Date: 18:20:34 07/21/98
Well, finally the word and critical phrase has been oppenly written by Mrs Hyatt and Moreland, the current judges of morality here in CCC. Finally they have indulged tehmselves in unleashing all the amount of his wrath: I am a thief. Why I am a thief? Because: a) I got a Sargon V copy for free b) I made some statements trying to argue that software uses and abuses are not not the same that those present around other products and that to copy once or twice -whom do more than that?- cannot be described as larceny, except just from a pure theroetically, abstract and finally ridiculous way of looking this world. I ask to the readers of this "discussion" to judge the tone, the words and the arrogance of these gentlemen. They have flamed me because I have been not one of those hypocrites so abundant in certain puritan environments. I have just recognized the fact that probably almost all of us do some lesser, minor degree of copying and that that behaviour has became so a rooted part of the software culture that is surely incorporated in the economy of this field and so you cannot, except if you ARE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE SO LIMITED IN HIS UNDERSTANDING THAT CANNOT UNDESTAND NOTHING IN THIS WORLD BEYOND PRINTED WORDS, qualify that as burglary or larceny. No being enough to qualify me as a thief, they say that my arguments are stupid, ridiculous, etc. So they qualify me also as an idiot. In fact, I am. If I was not one, surely I had not expended my time reasonning with people so childishly stucked in abstract, simpistic, legalistic and unrealistic views. Probably the example of the car was not very good; the problem is I tried to get one enough simple to be understood, even throught its faults, by these gentlemen. Of course I know a CAR CANNOT BE DUPLICATE, so to explain that supposing you does not know it, is a show of undescribable naivete. With the same logic these gentlemen could explain me that the Earth is not flat. Thanks in advance for the information. What surely they does not know is that the famous -or unfamous- difference made by software producer between the posesion of the phisical vehicle of the software and the use of the software is completely artificial. With the same reason General Motors could say that when we buy a car we are not buying the design behind it. So what? What matter in a merchandise is not the posession of the right to the design, but the use of it. In the case of software, the use of it includes the likelihood to copy the material part of it as much that is technically possible and it is so due precisely to the design in itself. We are not talking here of dissambling a program for industrial copying, but a simple copy with the simplest tools any computer user have in his machine. And if a producer does not want to aloud that, he ever can do the all thing umpossible to copy, as in some programs happens. But if not, then we can presume that a margin of freedom is implicitly given to us respect to that. If you cannot understand that, difference between margins, between degress in the things of this world, if you only understand things in order of black and white and still you qualify a simple coy as an unfamous act of burglary, then nothing more can be added. Finally, I will not continue this, no matter what these gentlemen can add, if they do. It is imposible to discuss with anybody that puts himself in such an arrogant position of superior morality and interpreter of the law, without giving not even a milimter to the oponent arguments or trying to open his minds to other aspects of the things. And less with people that indulges in the use of derogative sentences and judgements, adding personal attacks so easily made from the distance and facing a computer. Fernando
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