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At 12:07 PM +0000 3/28/01, Robert Eberwein wrote:
>I'd like to suggest that, righteous indignation aside, all copy
>write laws will be coming into question soon.
Actually, that's "copyright," in other words "the right to copy."
I sympathize with your feelings about lawyers and galleries, though I
would take the argument in a different direction. I think that since
unique art works can be such profitable commodities, it seems only
fair that the artist should participate in the profits from resale.
Why should a painter who originally bartered a work to pay off his
bar tab not receive a cut when that same painting sells at auction
for $500,000 a few years down the line?
>The idea that the *artist* has only allowed 235 to be made- and shut
>the negative away, is about as bogus a notion as has been conceived.
If you believe that the idea of tying value to scarcity is bogus,
then I think you'd have to agree that capitalism is equally bogus.
Destroying the lithograph stone is equivalent to OPEC's limiting oil
production to drive prices up.
>nothing in my code of ethics tells me that I can not give my
>cakewalk discs to my drummer. Hearing people call that *theft* gets
>my goat... Once I buy Cakewalk it's mine.
When you buy a software license you are under legal contract NOT to
give away or sell the software. If you violate that contract you are
either a liar for agreeing to something you never intended to honor,
or you are a thief. Of course, you've declared that you live by your
own code of ethics that places you above the copyright law, so none
of that should matter to you.
A software program such as Cakewalk is a professional tool that took
many programmer-years and considerable financial investment to
develop. It's not some bit of aesthetic inspiration floating freely
on the breezes of collective creativity. Companies need to sell these
programs to stay in business, and since the market is of limited size
and increasing competitiveness it really does hurt when sales are
diminished by software theft. I didn't really care about these things
until I started to work with software companies, but when I saw the
real impact on real people I woke up. For example:
A few years ago the leading program for sound editing on the
Macintosh was Alchemy by Blank Software. The company was tiny; when I
knew them there were only four people. Like most music software
Alchemy was copy-protected, though the number of key disk
installations was generous compared to some. Also, like most
copy-protected software, a cracked version began to make the rounds.
The program was very popular, but sales continued to decline. I
remember talking to their marketing director at a trade show and
being told that in that month they had sold NO copies of Alchemy! A
few months later the main programmer quit, and shortly after that the
program was sold to a larger company, Passport Designs. Passport took
the copy protection off, but rather than generating good will and
greater sales the product tanked. It was discontinued soon thereafter.
--
______________________________________________________________
Richard Zvonar, PhD zvonar@zvonar.com
(818) 788-2202 voice zvonar@LCSaudio.com
(818) 788-2203 fax zvonar@well.com
http://www.zvonar.com
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