Originally Posted by azorni

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It is just the same as a painter that would made a copy of a master's work. As long as he doesn't imitate the signature and doesn't try to sell the painting pretending it's a real, there is no legal offense, because there is no lie, no deception whatsoever.
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Originally Posted by azorni

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Law must protect the sign : but it must protect its integrity, not its commercial value. Only market forces should decide its value.
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Originally Posted by azorni

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6) Again : internet is made using many protocols and software that are mostly free and open. When you send an email, you don't pay anything for the people who wrote SMTP.

The reason is that no price would have any real economic justification. Say you want to charge $1 for your piece of code. Why $1 ? Why not $10 ? Why not $.01 ?
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Originally Posted by azorni

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Truth is that when you sell one item (a digital copy of your code), it costs you $0, that's why you can sell it at virtually any price. There is no rational justification for any price of a zero marginal cost product.

Originally Posted by Fargus

If you don't have the time to purchase it then you should find another way of achieving the same end. The whole point of software is to provide a service that saves you time and effort.

Originally Posted by azorni

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Now if it was possible to clone a credit card that easily, then it would mean that the protection system of the bank has become obsolete, and better ways of electronic identification should be designed. (I guess you don't use PIN protected cards as we do in Europe, but anyway...)
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Originally Posted by azorni

When you start selling your program, you're the only one who owns it. Some people might want it, and since you are the only one who owns it, they might come to you and accept to buy your program at your price, $15.

Let's say I buy it. In law theory, there is a principle which comes to property right, that's states that when I own something, I have the right to use it, but also to get rid of it or to give it to someone else. When you sold me your program, unless you had me sign a specific clause in the selling contract, you gave me that right to give this program to anyone I want. This is called alienation : the act of selling makes you give up some rights regarding what is sold.

So to answer your question, you have the right to charge $15 to anyone who wants you to give him your program.

But you don't have the right to invoke public force to punish someone who bought it to you and then gave it to someone else.

My opinion is that software editors should not sell their products by individual copies, but instead they should sell publication.

Say your firm developed a software which reached $1M in development costs. You want to sell it and would like to make $100K benefit, i.e. 10% profit.

Instead of trying to sell 100 thousand copies of software to 100 thousand of people at a price of $11 each, you should first publish some advert, some demo or some restricted version of the software in order to create demand and have the public realize its usefulness. Then you sell the publication of the complete program, for a price of $1.1M.

Potential buyers would have no choice but joining their money in order to obtain the software. You might for instance create a money bar on your site and explain that your program will only be published when the money level will reach the desired amount.

According to me this is the only way to sell digital data without threatening your customers of any legal proceeding.

Originally Posted by sachin007

I think it is just a matter of time and patience. For example students do not have the money to purchase expensive software's like adobe. So they try to find a cracked version on the internet. But finding a cracked version and making it work seamlessly is not easy. It needs a lot of time and patience. Most of the students have that but do not have adequate money to buy the software. Vice versa business professionals do not have the time and patience but do have money. For them time is more precious than the actual software so they buy it.

Originally Posted by azorni

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But to me this is just as silly as trying to sell a car with a special clause in the contract saying that the buyer will have no right to lend the car to anyone, nor the friends or familly.
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Originally Posted by azorni

Well I would buy it. I bought some XP CD, once. And maybe a few other softwares, occasionally. But if someone would have gave me one of his CD, I wouldn't have refused it. Well, after more thinking, I 'd rather refuse it, since it might be considered as recel.

Anyway I don't care since I tend to use only free software.

Originally Posted by azorni

A violation of a contract is a bad thing, there is no doubt about it.

But it's not theft, it's a violation of contract.

If you incur some financial loss from piracy, this means that EULA is a contract that your customers do not respect. This is moral risk in finance. You have to evaluate it precisely and decide what to do to avoid it : engage legal proceedings with unknown efficiency, or reconsider your economic model.

Originally Posted by azorni

Philosophically and economically, trying to sell a product without alienation, that is to say by keeping some rights on the future use of the product, is quite dubious.

Let's say you produce a very nice car which, for some reason, you think does only look good in red. You will decide to only sell this car to people who will agree to sign a contract which will forbid them to paint it in any other color.

Although it might seems ok, I would have much difficulty to blame anyone who would sign the contract, but who, as soon as the seller is away, would paint the car in blue.

Originally Posted by azorni

Another thing.

According to me, EULA should be considered as tying ("vente liée"), which is forbidden in many countries.

If someone want to buy a product without signing the EULA, he should be able to. Of course, the seller might give another price, for instance much higher. That's for instance why it is always possible to buy a mobile phone without any mobile phone provider subscription. (I bought my N900 without any subscription, as far as I'm concerned)

Of course for software this is not possible and EULA is almost always mandatory, since the selling of any copy of a software without EULA might immediately turn it into a shareware.

But still, such a selling should theoretically be possible. And, in order not to endanger their business, software editors would have to put a very high price for this selling. In that case we find the idea I was suggesting of selling the program for a huge price, comparable to development costs.