That's actually the point. Someone pays for it.. but not necessarily the person getting it.

If we take the formula of Time = Money.. then the people who created, wrote, and produced the music still paid for it even though everyone else is getting it for "free".

I understood your point.. I just wanted to point it out that Force wasn't a good word there .

Yes. However, the cost of health care is proportional to the quantity of the patients. We all pay for it.

In the case of music, once it has been paid enough to cover expenses and make a nice profit, the rest IS free. There is no additional cost nor reason to draw profit other than lining of pockets.

Let's assume you make AutoCAD in 15 dimensions. There are 4 customers on the planet that can afford it (and can use it). They pay, you get rich, because each customer pays 100 billion.

Nobody else has this kind of money not the use for the software. From the standpoint of the author, there is nothing more to gain. Releasing the software for free loses no assets. It is free, cost-wise. Averages don't apply.

But I'm reiterating. My point was, some things ARE free.

I guess what I'm asking is this: Is it OK for a company that has covered costs and made millions to hold information hostage with the sole purpose of milking it?



Right over information is there to protect the author (it doesn't, it protects the producers) and to give the author an advantage in launching the product so that even lower forms of business can compete if they have something to offer.

It is there so that any man, no matter how poor or how alone, can create beauty or add to the sum of human knowledge and have a shot at a reward in a world where a company presses a billion records a second.

It is there so that a small coffee shop that makes unique coffee would not be crushed by the giants.

Yet it now protects the company from the man. It might be music, or software or pants. But in these cases, it allows a company to patent coffee and then use the police from tracking me in my home, see if I make coffee and sue me for an insane amount for drinking coffee.

One might say that a million torrent users is not one man. True. But it's not the million that has to pay for it, it's Random Joe.

Isn't holding the rights to a song for 20 years abuse? Was this the spirit of the law? Help corporate suits to retire to Hawaii while money keeps pouring in with no additional effort?

Is a suture the creation of a doctor? Should you pay rent on a suture? A bypass? A transplant? Royalties for a life-saving maneuver? Poor doctor needs a new pair of Aston Martins?

If arrangement of notes is reserved, isn't an arrangement of flowers too a creation? Can I sue you for having a bouquet similar to mine? A house similar to mine? If I put oil on canvas it's a painting that's protected, but if I use a spray and a wall it's graffiti and public property?

There should be limits to what a patent or a right should cover. It should cover justifiable expenses and a healthy profit margin.

In some cases, patents and rights are a necessary evil. Pharmaceutical patents, e.g., can deny treatment of sick people, even allow them to die, on periods of 12 to 20 years, for profit (and coverage of costs). While I find this to be incredibly one-sided, at least there are research costs and one can argue that without these costs the medication would not be there in the first place. Though frankly, economy be damned. If someone I cared about was extinguishing before me when treatment was available and affordable but artificially inflated by five zeroes I'd spend my last few bucks on an automatic weapon.

Point is, that's what happens when rights are blanket-defined in time instead of a more balanced system, limiting abuse.

However, with many products, there are no hundreds of billions in R&D to cover.

This legal system has worked fine in the past, when the technology to scan an invention wasn't available, when recipes were secret, when things were done by hand. When economy was slow, research was slow and independent.

Times have changed. Replication is available for data and soon the same thing will happen to a wider variety of things. Research is no longer a singular effort, we have university networks, labs, international projects.

Data has pretty much broken barriers and it's not like the genie is going back into the bottle. Production has also pretty much broken barriers and it's not like there's stopping China. We couldn't if we wanted to but we don't want to.

Is it still wrong or illegal if not enforceable? Last I checked, non-enforceable laws were invalid.

So, is it "ok" to hold information hostage when there are no costs to cover? Is the letter of the law and an army of lawyers bigger than the spirit of the law? I'm hoping the balance will change for the better. In some places around the world the idea has been accepted. In others, people only seem to get denser.

I'm hoping it doesn't take too long for the world to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the next century.

Problem with your long winded post is simple.
You make AutoCAD in 15 dimensions and 4 people buy it for 100 billion each for it then you release it for free because as you said you are now rich and have no more cost. You forgot about Autocad 16? Who is going to pay to develop that?
If the 4 people in the world that needed version 15 now see you give it way when you release ver 16 why would the 4 people buy it. Why not wait for someone else to buy it and you get your profit and then they could get it for free, save their 100 billion.
Everyone would be sitting waiting for it to become free.

Working on your premise we would all still be running on TRS-80 computers with 4 k ram and a tape recorder for storage.
The incentive to innovate to improve would be gone.

To the OP if you think it is OK for a student to steal because they have limited funds then would you mind if someone with no money at all took yours? Took your car, your house?
Why not if you can steal because you have limited money then by the same logic someone with no money should be able to take anything they want.

It is veeery long time from the last post in this discussion. But anyway: if you make money with their masterpiece, you really should share. If you dont, their claim has still a moral backing - my experience - give ceasar what belongs to caesar or do it your way for free. There are enough possibilities in each linux distro to do anything on amateur level. And if you speak about you just wanna try something and delete after, for me it doesnot belong to these categories.

Then again you could always justify it like this: "if its possible, its right to do".

I have an apple and I want to sell it, so I leave it on a table, write a note that says "want an apple? - leave 50 cents!", and leave.

I come back and see that the apple is gone and the note is ripped up.

This makes me think "okay, that was a horrible way to sell my apple", which now promts a response:

- cut my losses and try the same method again
- get better security for my apple
- stop selling apples and find something else to make money off of


Iunno where Im going with this, I guess Im saying "if you can do it, do it".

Take murder, for instance. Not that Im suggesting you go out and kill someone.

Its illlegal, thats fine. The fact that its illegal doesnt render it automatically immoral though. You could easily morally justify murder, however the legal ramifications are still in place. Then it basically boils down to this:

"risk vs reward".

If you find the reward to be worth the risk, there you go.

Speaking about morals in this kind of situation is ridicolous, since morals are fundementally subjective. I can morally justify murdering a schoolbus filled with children in some sort of theoretical excersise, while you might not be able to.

And as morals are changed according to circumstance and context, you cant really find a "global unified moral code" on any matter.


Take software piracy for instance. They slap a "piracy" on there to make it sound horrible, and they tell you that you wouldnt download a car.

Id steal a car under certain circumstances, but thats irrelevant right now.


So you pirate a program.

Who suffers:

- Developers/distributors: less income. easy.
- Users (both pirating and paid): less income to the distributors/developers means less incentive to get strong products out as the cost just doesnt justify hireing better/more people, or buying the rights for a certain SW idea.
- Society: dog eat dog world, companies stuggle for the small marketshare that still pays for product, but in a cutthroat manner that needs to cut costs by any means and target specifically for users either too inept or too morally righteous to exploit the technology.


Who wins:

- Developers: Producers realize that the cash can not come from SW sales directly, and find alternate measures; advertising is one of the recent ones. Think stuff like product placement in games, what have you. This is progress in a market thats set to die soon. Alternatively, or also, they find security measures that actually fend off piracy. Another alternative is to be able to lay down a global law against it and effectively shut down piracy somehow.
- Users: Desperation breeds innovation, which could ultimately be to the users advantage.
- Society: we face a threat, and by living through it, we learn, adapt and continue. Its not a huge threat, its a minor shift in how SW development and distribution works. Bottom line could easily be on the plusside for us as a whole.




PS:
Wow I should really not write stuff. Ever. Ah well.

Funny, how philosophical we can be, it's attracting to dispute the things on higher level than eat'n sleep.
That was not really my point. When is it impossible to pay, if you use it for profit e.g.? If you find impossible to pay, it still may be right to do.

Actually, the point is that people dont want to accept "the global unified moral code" (that exists) and they rather develop their own, that matches better their behavior. What you said is just a matter of the level of person's insanity - you really can believe that shooting people on some Norway island is the good.

You have nicely compared the pros/cons, but it already walks on the way 'there is no g.u.m.c', there is just good/bad for me.

Honestly in my opinion, If you're a student, and if you use it for the sake of learning it should be okay. But then, you can still use trial version software for that - that should be perfectly legal.

If you are in need of that specific software but can not afford to purchase polished software, you would still be able to find quality open source software if you look hard enough...

-Edit:

Qn: Would you pay the cost of the software if you start earning - since you've already used it?


Scenario:
If you develop a software spending your time and resources.
Would you feel it is fair for some unknown person, using your software without you knowing about it - regardless of the finances...

Human: commit first, reason after.