Software Pirate gets 27 months in jail!

[bikerdude]

Hi.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/03/29/HNprisonforsoftwarepiracy_1.html

WOW!!!

 

[rdrast]

/applaud

No, seriously.

Say what you will, but the engineering costs of developing software, especially with today's technology, are incredibly high. Sure, I hate having to pay the money for a new copy of "XYZ", but, as both a PLC programmer, and also a programmer for all kinds of other things (little applications, communications drivers, database systems, etc) I know that if you want quality, it's important to keep the developers eating.

I even pay for shareware IF IT IS USEFUL (Note: I have never paid for WinZip, though I probably should, but I have a few dozen licensed copies of PKZip which I prefer).

The thing most striking about that article though, is that the [cough]'Distributor' wasn't selling his illicit 'warez' through a .ru website.

 

[Ken M]

I even pay for shareware IF IT IS USEFUL (Note: I have never paid for WinZip, though I probably should, but I have a few dozen licensed copies of PKZip which I prefer).

To say you "even" pay for shareware makes it sound as though you're going way beyond your part of the implied deal. The whole point of shareware is that you pay for it, but that you get the chance to evaluate it properly first. The paying is not optional if you continue to use it. It's the continued use that is optional.

Secondly I love this idea of 'substitute' licences. I'm not quite clear whether you have and use WinZip. You say you "probably should" pay for it which implies you do use it. But backing that off against 30, 40 or more licences for PKZip seems a strange concept. "Hmmm I've bought several copies of that old John Grisham novel, so I'm entitled to go and help myself to his latest in the bookshop."

I think the issue of software licences always gets people confused and I'm no better. We seem to judge what we think is right and fair at a personal level, rather than checking what the law and the explicit terms and conditions of sale actually say. When was the last time anyone actually read an agreement before clicking the "I Agree" button during installation? If you're like me it was probably sometime back in the late Pleistocene.

Ken