Piracy and cypherpunks

[Jim Gillogly <jim@acm.org>]

holist writes:
> Having read a significant amount of material on the ideological (rather than
> the technical) background of cypherpunks (Tim May's writings, mainly) it
> seems to me rather obvious that a relative newcomer to these circles would
> come to expect to find people who may not be "mannered intellectuals", but
> who are certainly not erstwhile defenders of intellectual property,
> particularly asthe concept is applied to software today.

Hurm.  Does Tim May advocate passing around unlicensed copies of an $895
Statgraphics program?  I think I must have missed that post.  In any case,
cypherpunks are not a monolithic bunch.  While many (like me) are wild-eyed
libertarians of one flavor or another, others are feds, corporate shills,
government apologists, prepubescent hackers, and (d'oh) working professionals
in the computing industry.  I, for example, do believe that the concept of
intellectual property makes sense in some cases -- e.g. the inventions of
public-key encryption and the RSA algorithm, which were important breakthroughs
that merit substantial rewards, and I recognize that this is probably not a
majority cypherpunk opinion.  I do <not> appreciate patents on all the
ticky-tack trivial modifications of every silly algorithm that nobody else
thought was worth patenting.

However, pirating commercial software is not a good way to make your protest.
If you don't want to pay for it, write your own version and make it freely
available.

> Especially as I hear nobody complaining about the advertisement for
> pornography that I receive every two days, regular as clockwork, from the
> cypherpunks list, not to mention the great deal of other entirely useless,
> automatically generated advertising.

The difference is that the porn spammers don't read the lists they spam,
so complaining on the list does no good.  The piracy request came from a
fairly regular poster to this list.  Big difference.  One kind of complaint
might lead to a behavioral change, and the other leads only to more noise.

If I <must> be mannered and intellectual when addressing wannabe software
pirates, I'll quote Catullus:  Pedicabo et irrumabo, Mentula!

-- 
	Jim Gillogly
	29 Blotmath S.R. 1998, 15:12
	12.19.5.12.12, 4 Eb 5 Ceh, Ninth Lord of Night