Way to pick semantics. My point was that the creator gets to offer his work for the price of their choosing. By pirating, you remove that right by paying nothing.


I'd bet that book stores and the author or the work would say otherwise. In fact, Google had just this issue with scanning books, was taken to court over it, and would have lost (which is why they settled for a huge fine out of court). Legally, it is stealing.

And that's where you're wrong. If you were right, hookers would be free. They're not. They're paid for their work, since they technically sell no tangible product outside of "beauty or performance".

Value can be influenced by supply and demand, but neither is the predictor or creator of value. Value is place by the creator of a good, and the market reacts accordingly. If the value is too low, there's a run on the supply until demand is met or supply is exhausted, which then drives up the value in resale. If the value is to high, pent up demand exists and a market for a competitor is formed.

At no point does supply and demand itself set the value. Nor at any time does those in the demand side get to choose the value of the supply. Their choice is weather or not to purchase from the supply for the cost set by the one offering the good. Simply taking the good without paying any cost for an item that has a value set on it is called theft.

In this particular case, the author has asked people to pay what they see as a fair value, which is somewhat risky. But in any case, taking and using that code for free is still theft, since if you value it enough to use it, it clearly has value to you, for which you did not pay.

For me, the value of the driver is negligible. I'll probably never actually use packet injection, and the other enhancements are pretty minor. For me, that means I paid a token amount for the privilege of having the driver in the event I do need it later.

Except the work put into creating it.

Actually... My philosophy is quite well understood. There are even terms for it. Including terms like "reverse engineering" and "patent". This isn't "my philosophy", by the way. It and other philosphies of trade were documented long ago by several people who's names you may have heard, including Hume, Smith, Marx, and the like. This particular philosophy was documented by Hume and Smith, and is the predominant form we today call Capitalism.

Reproducing a non-unique idea would be quite acceptable. In fact, in doing so you would then be able to offer that product for a price you found reasonable (including for free). Had someone created an alternative module and offered it for free, so be it. A good example being Sygic, OVI maps, and the flurry of open source mappers here. Nobody is screaming that people using Navit or modRana is stealing from Syigic.

Reproducing a unique work, where the idea had not been conceived of before, and more importantly that you would have not come up with yourself, is slightly different. That's where the concept of patents come in. And reproducing an exact duplicate of someones work (even from memory) is also wrong. The concept of copyright is derived from this.

Perhaps you missed the entire point of the thread... In this case, the author was under contract, and the contractor did breach that contract. It would have been very difficult to recover anything from the contractor though, so instead the author ask if people would be willing to pay something for his work to help compensate for his time in exchange for releasing it.

Understand, he was under no obligation to release it. But he did because people here were willing to help compensate him for it. Then people started offering copies of his work for free, and made disparaging remarks against him for attempting to get money for his work. That's the stem of this entire debate. The fact that you don't know that shows you're not even paying attention to whats happening in this thread.

And how exactly do artists eat? If people don't pay for beauty or work as you stated above, how would artists make a living? How would programmers making "customized applications" make money? After making sad application, it's intangible and there for free, isn't it? Your whole premise is contradicted by your own statement here, since you're talking about someone paying for a custom application, or providing support, which are both forms of work.

Maybe it's not "my philosophy" that need questioning here, but yours. You just detailed two instances of where someone should be paid for their work. Why is it ok to pay for work sometimes, and not at others? How do you decide which work is valid and should be paid for and which isn't? It's clearly not the tangibility of the goods (as you've already stated), since there is nothing tangible when it comes to support or programs (no matter how custom they are).

So by your definition, murder isn't wrong as long as you murder people that you think it's ok to kill, and that can't afford lawyers (or at least who's surviving relatives can't afford them). Nice morals and legal system you have there. Remind me to never visit you.