--- gary hildebrand [email protected] wrote:
Piracy happened when the cost of software (including o/s's) was prohibitive. Remember when a copy of Wordstar for
That's total BS or you're new to the software use world, but since you speak of Wordstar. I suspect the former. I hail back to the days of build-it-yourself PCS. Yes, I know you can do that now. I'm speaking about Sinclairs or was it Altairs? God age and memory the two just don't go together. Anyway... People have been pirating software for as long as BBSes, external storage systems (tapes, diskettes, etc) and the internet have existed. It has nothing to do with cost. It has everything to do with what you grew up believing was right or wrong and what you personally have allowed yourself to consider acceptable behavior.
For me, copying and sharing commercial software for free is wrong. I won't call it piracy. It's copyright violation. Copying and selling commercial software is copyright theft. If you're caught you deserve whatever punishment the law says. If you do a crime you should be willing to do the time. Copying software you have paid for and use only on your own personal home computers is fine, although some would disagree with me on this. I consider this fair use. But I also only have three people in my house. I do believe that if you then sell or give away one of those computers, any software you do provide with it should have it's own license.
If you are unwilling to pay for a product then don't use it. I would expect that you would not consider walking into a store and walking out with book without paying for it acceptable behavior. Why would you think it is acceptable behavior to do the equivalent thing with software? I can understand the frustration of wanting to play Quake 2009, but not being able to because you need UltraVista 2015 to run it, but that doesn't make it anymore acceptable behavior.
Also, since I have had every version of Windows since version 1.01. I have no problems with upgrading any of my PCs to any version of Windows I own. I bought those disks/CDs and any version after version 1 is an upgrade, so I have literally a dozen or more Licenses to Windows. While this may be a stretch, it's not an issue because I don't run Windows, although my laptop has a (currently broken) copy installed.
Lastly, I never, ever click on those license agreements. If I have a license I must click through and I don't agree to all the terms, I don't use it. Someone else may come along and click that agreement, but i won't. Once that has happened I have no problem using it. This may also be a stretch, but then the vile things should never have been upheld by judges, and some are not.
That's my $0.02.