Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!bellatrix!carlson
From: carlson@bellatrix (Richard L. Carlson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Software Development And Piracy (Spurred By FTL replies)
Message-ID: <8153@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 9 Dec 88 02:01:27 GMT
References: <555@icus.islp.ny.us> <12325@cup.portal.com>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: carlson@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Richard L. Carlson)
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 55

In article <12325@cup.portal.com> FelineGrace@cup.portal.com (Dana B Bourgeois) writes:
>Eric Hyman lists 5 classes of pirates. (I won't list them here 'cause I don't
>remember what they all are).  I maintain that his #2 is NOT a pirate.
>... Am I a pirate now?  No! All software I currently have has
>been purchased by me and paid for.  Was I a pirate in the past?  I don't think
>so, but others might.  Would I do this again?  You bet!  I want to know that I
>can really USE that $40 package(or $400 package) before I buy it.

I can't say that I condone even this type of "pirating".  But we definitely
need *some* method of protecting consumers from bad software.  Software is
not like a TV, where you can glance at it in a store and immediately see if
it's going to satisfy all your needs.  Software is much more complicated.
And a lot of the idiotic aspects of poorly-written software show up only
after you've used it for a while.

Coincidentally, I've just started paying attention to the TV ads that
guarantee your full money back if you're not satisfied with whatever they're
selling; even if you've used up whatever that was.  It seems to me that
something along these lines is what we need for software:  an advertised,
up-front policy that guarantees you'll get your full money back if you're
dissatisfied with a product for any reason.

Now, I claim that this will satisfy almost all of today's
"legitimate pirates" that just want to test-drive software, and *also*
allow software to be free from copy protection.  Why?  Well, say that
all dissatisfied customers must return the software directly to the
manufacturer.  Then, the manufacturer can maintain a database of all people
that have requested refunds for software.  And, gasp, the software publishers
could even *share* their information to find "often-returners".  So a pirate
could buy a piece of software, copy it, and then get a refund on the original
disk, but he would be in someone's database.  And he could rest assured
that if he did this very often, he would arouse suspicion.

Hopefully, this would not even cause legitimate users to be harassed,
because they could supply legitimate reasons for returning the software
that they could not use, even if they returned a lot of programs.

And another factor to consider is that this scheme would not suffer the
same fate as shareware.  In fact, it would *benefit* from the "inertia
factor":  after buying a piece of software, someone would have to go to
extra work to get his money back, and so only people with serious complaints
about a product would be likely to return it (as opposed to shareware,
where only people that are exceptionally impressed with a product [plus
a few all-around "good-guys" :-)] will bother to go to the extra effort
of sending the author money).

I know this is a pretty simplistic picture of things, but I think it
makes a good place to start working for a copy-protection-free world.
And maybe some publishers actually allow you to do this anyway; but if
so, they sure don't advertise it.

Just a thought...

-- Richard
   carlson@ernie.Berkeley.EDU