Xaltlee's Journal: Thoughts on software theft?

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
- Buddha

Foreword: I posted some of this as a comment in the account of foobar104's journal. I never got a reply, but maybe I directed it to the wrong person - I seem to remember him being vehemently anti-piracy, and I could have confused him with someone else. (Or her, or it, whichever. "Him" is a non-insulting pronoun in the English language, unless one happens to be a feminist.) In any case, I wanted to preserve these points for debate with interested parties - I'm curious to see the answer that might come from it, and, as always, am quite willing to be enlightened. Note: I have added to this since I posted in foobar104's journal.

Regarding software piracy:

First - do people really own the software a vendor sells them? Can they do anything they like with it? Resell it, chop it up and use its bits in their system for other things? Port it to another OS and use it there? With normal vendors, the answer is usually "no", yet they behave as if software is a normal, concrete product and sell it under false pretenses. If software is to be treated as a normal product in the sale, the right to copy it is implicit with all the other rights involved in owning a normal product - but any copy of a normal product would likely end up imperfect. Thus the software industry ends up shooting itself in the foot - people /expect/ to be able to do what they want with their software, and ignorantly go along and do so.

Second - have they taken anything beyond the bits (and even that is debatable, given that the burden of providing bandwidth for stolen software usually rests on the thief) from the vendor? If they weren't going to buy it in the first place, how can it be counted as a lost sale? This bothers me as well, in a rather fundamental way. How can this be theft if no one loses anything?

Third, I want to share a story I read as a child which reminds me a lot of the current situation. I dunno, maybe it's worth something, maybe not.

A poor boy was wandering through his village, and purchased a loaf of bread with a few coins he'd earned begging. He came upon a meat vendor, and saw the tasty roast turning on its spit. The boy held his bread out over the roast to absorb the scent of the meat, and began to eat the bread. The meat vendor caught him, grabbed him by the arm, and called for the local fuzz. When they arrived, the man accused the boy of stealing the scent of his meat. The fuzz were flustered - had the boy actually done something wrong? He hadn't really taken anything, since the meat was still just as good-smelling, but even so, his bread was better for having done what he did. They turned to the village fool and asked him what to do, mostly to see if he'd come up with something they hadn't thought of. "Do you have any coins left, boy?" said the fool. The boy replied that he did, but only a few. The fool nodded, took the coins, and shook them in the meat vendor's face. "He has stolen the scent of your meat for his bread, and now he has repaid you with the sound of his coins." So the cops let the kid go, the meat vendor gave up, and the boy ran off to die young of disease or exposure. They all lived happily ever after, or whatever.

This last part tells me that perhaps we need to look at the software piracy subject from new angles, find other ways to pay for things like that. Open Source software geeks do this already by making it themselves. It is new ground, I believe - never before have we had the means to spread so much information so quickly to enable so many people. What /would/ the ideal solution be? Not what's /going/ to happen, but what /should/ happen. Thoughts, anyone?

Note, please, that this is a question about idealism and morality. It's not for practical issues like law; I want to figure out the /moral/ and /correct/ thing to do here, without relying upon "because Uncle Sam says so".

I suggest a faith based initiative.

[sllort]

I like your parable about the meat, the bread, and the sound of the coins. I would like to tell you another one.

One day, the world's wealthiest man woke up and found a machine on his doorstep. He took the machine inside. The machine had a pointer and a button. By pointing the pointer at an object and pressing a button, the man discovered that the machine could replicate any object, even itself. The man made a few copies of the machine. Then he copied some of his money. Then he copied his Ferrari. Then he began to shake with fear. He realized that the structure and fabric of the society he rested atop was built upon the control of the flow of material goods. At noon, the man's phone rang. The voice on the other end threatened to release the machine to the world. The man begged and pleaded not to destroy the order, not to release chaos upon the world. But the voice on the other end of the line said "property wants to be free".

The machine was loosed upon the world and civilization collapsed in flames. The End.

Re:I suggest a faith based initiative.

[Xaltlee]

That's a good one. But it doesn't say how civilization would collapse in flames. Yeah, it's chaos. On the other hand, a machine like that would enable us to go to the stars, at least theoretically. It would allow us to do things beyond what we already can. I have enough faith left in the human race that I expect some people would go out and attempt to do those things.

I expect quite a few people would fight such a machine due to the loss of power it represents for them. Hell, they might turn it into a religion - now that's a "faith-based initiative". Copying objects is wrong! Fight prosperity! God says having enough food is bad! We're overpopulating ourselves even as we kill the scientists working to find us another habitable planet!

Except they'd be giving up the power by doing that - they'd be putting themselves at a disadvantage to the people who had the machines. And they'd fail. And eventually people would end up seeding the stars with the help of this magic machine.

So... where's the badness? Chaos isn't bad. Hell, the only reason we have order is because we pretend it exists. Sure, it would upset the balance of power and incite a few wars. But if such a machine were released to the world, well, it'd also cause a revolution. That is, of course, assuming some psycho didn't get ahold of a nuke and a launcher and a hundred willing men with the training to help him launch. But hey, the world's an unstable place anyhow - would you discard that much good out of fear of a single moron you'd probably be able to find defenses against with the help of that machine?

And how does this relate to software again? Copying products is already possible with software, and society hasn't gone down in flames yet.