Author: Stephen A. Boak
Date: 20:41:41 09/30/02
Go up one level in this thread
Uri Blass wrote (two separate postings, snipped): >>>It is illegal but the difference between it and stealing is >>>that in stealing there is always a victim and in this case >>>if the user does not want to buy the software in case >>>that he cannot get it then there is no victim. >>> > >I understand the point but there is still difference between it and what is >considered to be stealing by all people. > >In stealing someone is losing from it relative to the case that it is impossible >to steal. >In software piracy it is the case only in part of the cases. > >Uri Uri, you are struggling very hard to justify something that is morally & legally wrong. Me thinks he doth protest too much--for _some_ reason. I don't know why. By your analogy (reductio ad absurdum), if a person doesn't want to pay for something that belongs to another person/company but instead simply takes it, it is morally & legally not stealing because there would not have been a 'sale' anyway. This amounts to: my intentions were never to pay for it, so if I take it for nothing, no sale was lost, no victim exists, and I am _right_ that it is morally justifiable! I think taking a copy of movei program (first commercial version) would be great. I can use Uri's own argument to justify it! It is a bootstrap argument (hoisting oneself by one's boots is considered an impossibility--to claim, as well as to do) to say: Since I am unwilling to pay for the right to something, then no one is losing a sale, therefore if I take it without paying for it there is no victim, since there is no loss. Hmm, there is something depraved about this position. You said "there is still difference between it and what is considered to be stealing by all people." Do you think what is right and wrong is _dependent_ on what people think of it? Or on having a vote that agrees 100% (no dissenters)? Hmm. Some others here have argued that 'everyone does it, so it is not wrong to do it'. I was raised to believe that two wrongs don't make a right. We cannot point to the wrongs of others to _justify_ why we did wrong ourselves. This would be an attempt to draw attention away from our own wrong, by pointing at the wrong of others. Children do this all the time--and some adults. Most adults can see through this attempt at a 'slight of hand.' Hmm, but some adults still try the trick of misdirection. People who steal have all sorts of sordid, twisted reasons (purported logic) for doing what they did. They stretch the truth, if they even purport to rely on it, until it is not recognizable as truth. The denial stage never ends. It is said that if you tell a single lie, you have to lie many more times to cover it up. Hmm, maybe this explains unending, tortured attempts to justify a wrong by twisting facts and notions of morality until it (morality) is no longer recognizable. The law gives rights to authors of software. The rights themselves are intangible. Yet they are recognizable & enforceable/actionable in a court of law. Even intangible rights may be stolen or wrongly interfered with by a thief. No reply is necessary. --Steve
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.