Re: your mail

[mgraffam@idsi.net]

On Thu, 19 Nov 1998, holist wrote:

> I understand that there may be other reasons why it is unwise to post
> requests for warez on these lists, but moral outrage at the thought of
> software piracy was not one I expected to read here.

I for one am not a tremendous fan of copyright as applied to software
today. I support the theory .. as a programmer I can appreciate the
effort that goes into software development and I don't wish to see
such developers harmed by piracy. 

OTOH, the consumer has a vested interest in sampling software before he
pays for it. I wouldn't buy a car if I wasn't allowed to test drive it
first. If someone offered me a car that I could not test drive, and
that I could not return if it is defective, I certainly wouldn't buy
the thing. As a consumer it is a bad move, though it certainly helps
the car manufacturers (they can make a defective product with no worries).

A prime example of this is Win98 .. a friend of mine was running win95 
happily and smoothly (well, as smooth as win95 gets). He upgraded to 98.
It crashed several times during the install procedure, and make his
win95 set up unusable in the process. 

He can't return his win98 upgrade and get his money back (due to
copyright), and he wasn't allowed to test it all out before spending
the cash. In a word, he is screwed.

We can't ignore the programmer's need to get paid and we can't ignore
the consumer's need to a fair shake.

We need to find a common ground.

Now, for small $40 word processors, a sampling system is probably not
worth the trouble. But for expensive or important packages (like OS's)
sampling the software first is a good thing. 

> 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.

That is spam. Cypherpunks is an open list (any messages sent in are 
distributed freely). 

Why not find a nice free web-based email service with mail filtering?
Filter the porn out before you even get the mail forwarded to your,
or before you read it over the web or POP or whatever.

Michael J. Graffam (mgraffam@idsi.net)
"Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine."
			Henry David Thoreau "Civil Disobedience"