Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mandrill!gatech!uflorida!novavax!maddoxt From: maddoxt@novavax.UUCP (Thomas Maddox) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: Piracy Summary: few simple answers Keywords: copy protection piracy Message-ID: <501@novavax.UUCP> Date: 29 May 88 21:38:45 GMT References: <9160@cisunx.UUCP> <1801@uhccux.UUCP> <807@netxcom.UUCP> <1641@looking.UUCP> <174@proxftl.UUCP> <1654@looking.UUCP> <895@actnyc.UUCP> Reply-To: maddoxt@novavax.UUCP (Thomas Maddox) Organization: Nova University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida Lines: 68 I have been following this discussion of piracy with special interest because, unlike the majority of discussants, I am not a programmer, but I am a producer of intellectual property, i.e., a writer. My sense is that we do not yet understand *information as property* fully enough to make absolute pronouncements; that the moral terrain outlined by issues such as software piracy is not yet clearly mapped. Thus the following remarks are more on the order of tentative explorations than definitive mappings. Perhaps it would make sense to say that I produce a kind of software; certainly it makes sense to say that I produce artifacts that have many of the characteristics of programs. My intellectual property, like the programmer's, requires an extraordinary effort to produce: the 7000 word story that appears in _Omni_, say, represents a profound investment of all my talents and skills, whatever they might be. So, if you copy one of these stories and give it to your friends, are you stealing from me? Well, yes. Technically, you should buy the magazine (or whatever) in question and not make use of available xeroxing. Practically, a great deal of copying does take place, at least some of it in violation of copyright. Yet, few of us writers yell about such piracy; instead, we do so in the cases where someone markets our work without acknowledgement or pay. In short, the fact that you might xerox a story, even a book, then do it again for a friend, and so on . . . it simply doesn't bother me much. If I were a programmer, however, I suspect I would feel differently--*perhaps* because the money to be made programming is on the whole (or on the average) much more than the money to be made writing fiction. In short, by xeroxing my _Omni_ story, you really don't steal much from me. However, if I write a useful MSDOS utility, and you steal that, then you may be stealing quite a bit more. Someone quoted, sarcastically, the tale about George Bernard Shaw and the great lady, the point of which is that having sex with someone for money is prostitution, whether the fee is $1 or $1,000,0000. While it is a charming story, its point runs counter to our experience of morality: misdemeanors are not felonies, no matter that both might be crimes; petty theft is not grand theft, etc. In short, I think part of the problem here is that we live in a culture which winks at several kinds of piracy (to add to previous examples, taping music and films in violation of copyright) and thus creates a morally ambiguous climate with regard to other piracies. Also, I think most of us feel that intellectual property really is different somehow from material property, that xeroxing my story is different from stealing my computer, as it were. We live in a time when information has just recently become known as a thing with properties of its own, apart from whatever medium in which it might be manifested; it is not unreasonable to suppose that new concepts of property might have to evolve with regard to information. (As an aside, I believe most of us are committed in some way to the free flow of information; we feel that a culture which generates such a flow is a more open and civilized culture than one which does not. Thus, we may be caught on the point where the right to personal property conflicts with this more general principle that dissemination of information is a good thing.) Finally, I do not believe that capitalism and socialism are at all the issue here. Only the most primitive and otherworldly communists, such as the 19th century utopians, have ever believed in total abolition of private property. In the real world, socialists and communists alike have laws against theft. Thus, whether we are capitalist or socialist (or some mixture), we all have to try to come to terms with this new kind of property.