Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

Fortunately that has never happened nor will it happen here.

Those two concepts do not stand on equal footing.

The former is codified in law based originally on sound, good intentions. Sadly, many people confuse bad implementations with the core concept and use their naivete to rationalize improper responses.

The latter is pure subjective opinion based on an individual's income, lifestyle and comfort zone.

We have the power to change things, but the majority chooses the easy way out rather than acting collectively to effect change. Every instance of piracy, IP violation, or what have you, is an instance of undermining efforts toward true solutions that benefit us all. If we instead acted collectively, we could force the out-of-touch powers that be into submission-- or even extinction.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

I try to snip longer paragraphs when agreeing.. but this just merited repeating since there is no thanks button.

This post, especially the bolded part, is the most sense made in the last several pages of this thread.

I have no doubt in my mind that if everyone who has ever used a P2P, torrent, or Pirated any software were to work together on a specific solution or goal.. that they would have a high success rate in changing companies.

Unfortunately... that requires work. Laziness is so much more appealing :D..


(in seriousness: It's more that, if you gathered everyone that ever pirated software and put them in a room you're not likely to get just a single, actual agreement of anything out of all of them - even with regards to why they pirated in the first place.)

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

So I heard Google and HTC made a multi touch available on Android phone and some fruit company is trying to get a big bag of their money for violating some IP crap.... or did I miss the part of the thread where we already agreed that using your IP is bad, but using big bad corp IP is good? Otherwise explain me silly how patent for such a basic thing even came to existence.

Sometimes you can not make a your own app to do the same thing as commercial, because they did their paperwork and own patents even for a way to swipe your ***. Example is bnetd.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

Damn.. so much for my cheering blizzard for making their WoW installer downloadable.

That's a bunch of crap right there... IMHO of course.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

Client is free as long as it brings them more customers, besides to be perfectly honest you still need to buy a game and subscription after trial. Nevertheless I'm willing to pay for a service they provide still.

In bnetd case they argued it doesn't check serial key upon connection, however when asked to provide api for that they refused, which stinks )

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

Hell, I still pay for my WoW subscription even though I gave up on hardcore raiding and left the game for good(?) back in july 2009...
That´s how great I find that game so i´m even stupid enough to still pay for just to be able to log on if i get the urge.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

I don't think people should be able to patent ideas. They should be able to patent products. If someone writes a free flash from scratch.. adobe shouldn't be able to sue them for that. Even if it is compatible with Adobe's flash.

Ideas should be free for anyone to use and expand upon.. making them better and better.

Take the multi-touch for example... I do not think anyone should be able to hold a patent on simply "multi-touch".

They can patent the iphone itself.. the product itself.. and if anyone makes an identical iphone and sticks their name on it.. THEN go after them.. but just because a different phone happens to have multi-touch as well shouldn't be illegal.

Bnetd was written completely from scratch in my understanding.. If the code was stolen or directly copied from blizzard that would be one thing: But a complete, personal write of a code from those developers should not be illegal.

People should be able to code whatever they want.

Sometimes.. there is only 1 way to code something.. and also some code is freely published and available in books, websites, etc.. so SOME of the source code may look similar to blizzards... but there should be some kind of limit.. Source code must match X% in order to be called infringement of anything.

Monopolizing ideas is a bad idea that the US seems to have latched onto.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

You don't seem to understand that the spirit of open source is not about price, it's about freedom. Even the GNU project encourages developers to charge for their software to raise funds for development

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

My opinion is (and was, when I worked for a software company for eight years) that piracy has a certain utility for commercial interests and it is tolerated to a certain extent.

If you are selling software, you want a lot of people to try it, and you don't initially care whether they get it legitimately or not. What you care about is whether you eventually make money by selling it to the former piraters and their friends.

Much early software went under because it was too difficult to pirate and too expensive. When software came along that was easier to pirate (example: WordPerfect), it exploded in popularity. This is because people are never going to pay big bucks for a product they have no experience with. Once they have tried it and perceive its advantages, then they will consider paying for it.

Someone trying to sell software should find a way to get it to people, then make it increasingly inconvenient to upgrade without paying, while offering better and better features. Some pirates will find ways to continue getting it for free, but most people will find piracy too much hassle and will decide to pay.

And if you want to know which software is best, ask a pirate. That's because pirates don't care about the pricetag on the software and they tend to try everything. People who have to pay big bucks for software don't tend to buy lots of software and then use a small amount of it that they find works best. They take a guess and stay with a small number of programs.

So, commercial interests like piracy, but never admit it. It gives them a moral and financial way to intimidate users into paying for something they wouldn't have paid for in the past.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

I know that very well, that's why I didn't feel comfortable comparing free software to a bicycle and added ", I guess".

Well I thought I could say this anyway, probably because I was thinking about the old time when I was using linux although it didn't even have any real X desktop.

But indeed : free software is about freedom, not money. You're right to insist on that.

Let me add however that a bicycle has some common points with free software, because it is mainly a public domain designed device. Two wheels, some pedals, and other stuffs I don't know the english words for. All of this is the product of some inventors and is now general public knowledge.

Also, even if GNU developpers may charge for their software, it is impossible for them to forbid redistribution. So, ultimately free software always has good chances to be found free or charge, somewhere.