Re: Piracy and cypherpunks

[Rabid Wombat <wombat@mcfeely.bsfs.org>]

The best defence for the programmer is to make the software so buggy, 
complex, and poorly documented that enough revenue is obtained through 
support contracts and fees, supplemental documentation, training courses, 
and the like to cover the potential losses to piracy. NT comes to mind. ;)

On Thu, 19 Nov 1998, Steve Schear wrote:

> I tried to take a crack at it in Laissez Faire City Times
> http://www.zolatimes.com/V2.16/pageone.html
> 
> Tim May wrote:
> >At 7:33 AM -0800 11/19/98, Jim Gillogly wrote:
> >-- all issues of intellectual property are also issues of _enforceability_.
> >To the extent anonymous remailers, information markets, regulatory
> >arbitrage, systems like "BlackNet" ("BlackeBay," anyone?), and other crypto
> >anarchy technologies proliferate, enforcement of any particular nation's
> >intellectual property laws will become problematic.
> >
> >
> >-- finally, the U.S. position on patentability and copyrightability of
> >software and words is not the only position one may find morally
> >supportable. We do not, for example, allow "ideas" to be patented or
> >copyrighted (I don't mean "expressions of ideas," as in patents, or
> >"precise words," as in copyrights. Rather, I mean that we do not allow a
> >person to "own" an idea. To imagine the alternative, cf. Galambos.)
> >
> >
> >Long term, I expect current notions about intellectual property will have
> >to change.
> >
> >I'm a big believer in "technological determinism." For example, in my own
> >view (which I have debated with some well known cyberspace lawyers over the
> >years), the widespread deployment of video cassette recorders (VCRs)
> >necessarily changed the intellectual property laws. The Supreme Court, in
> >Disney v. Sony, uttered a bunch of stuff about time-shifting, blah blah,
> >but the real reason, I think, boiled down to this:
> >
> >"VCRs have become widespread. If people tape shows in their own homes, even
> >violating copyrighted material, there is no way law enforcement can stop
> >them short of instituting a police state and doing random spot checks. The
> >horse is out of the barn, the genie is out of the bottle. The law has to
> >change. But rather than admit that copyright is no longer practically
> >enforceable, we have to couch our decision in terms of "time-shifting" and
> >other such fig leaves."
> >
> >So, too, will anonymous remailers, black pipes, information markets,
> >regulatory arbitrage, and suchlike change the nature of intellectual
> >property.
> >
> >What form these changes will take, I don't know.
> >
> >--Tim May
> 
> 
> 
>