NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #1/NN_1993_1.iso/spool/comp/sys/mac/programm/20681

Text File | 1993-01-05 | 2.6 KB | 53 lines

Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!eff!world!siegel
From: [e-mail] (Rich Siegel)
Subject: Re: Why the Piracy? Here's why...
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Organization: GCC Technologies
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 15:34:03 GMT
Lines: 42

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Sean J. Crist) writes:
>
>There's a crucial difference between piracy and shoplifting.  With
>shoplifting, you are stealing an item which cost money to produce by
>itself.  With piracy, the software developer had the costs of developing
>the product, but you're not actually stealing a unit which cost money to
>be produced by itself.

I've got news for ya, pal. :-) With virtually any mass-produced good, even
something expensive like an automobile, the ratio of (cost of development)
to (cost of goods sold) is very high - it's how companies recover their
original development investment and continue to make money and stay in
business. By way of example a simple piece of molded plastic may only
cost a few cents to produce, but the cost to design and produce the tool
to make it can (and often does) run into the tens of thousands of dollars.

>If you don't make this distinction, you would have to claim that making a
>copy of an application which your friend bought is morally identical to
>walking into a store and stealing a shrink-wrapped software package off the
>shelf.  The former act doesn't actually *cost* the developer, distributor,
>and retailer anything; with the latter, there are all kinds of packaging,
>printing, and retail costs which the companies actually lose.  (A similar
>distinction could be made between sneaking into a movie theater vs.
>stealing popcorn: both are wrong, but they are different kinds of acts.)

As a matter of fact, piracy is very much like stealing a box. The costs
amount to almost the same thing, but in different areas - when you steal
the box, you've denied the retailer the opportunity to recover his
investment in purchasing the package from the distributor (or direct
from the company); when you copy the disk, you deny the company the
opportunity to recover its costs in R&D and production, which it would
have recovered by selling the finished goods to a distributor or retailer.

R.



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Rich Siegel                              Internet: [e-mail]
Senior Software Engineer
GCC Technologies