bakabaka1 opened this issue on Jan 24, 2003 ยท 61 posts
_dodger posted Sat, 25 January 2003 at 4:14 AM
I'm sure that you don't use KaZaA "because" of the spyware, but inspite of it Actually, you're not sure of fuckin' anything. I don't use Kazaa at all. However, under this concept that 'because a high percentage use it for illegal purposes' we should do the following: - ban Rolling papers. More people use them to roll spliffs than to roll cigarettes
Verizon doesn't have the right to protect known warez violators. This little piece of paper you're all talking about doesn't guarantee the right to privacy -- that's a common misattribution. It guarantees you the right to not have your house or a locked metal box searched without a warrant. It guarantees the right for your home not to be used as barracks. That's about it. Don't rely on the constitution to protect privacy -- to be honest, I'd think Americans would have learned by now not to rely on the constitution at all. If someone is under reasonable doubt they should, not doubt, be investigated. However, the responsibility for the illegal activity doesn't lie in the hands of Kazaa for providing a means anymore than it lies in the hands of Verizon for providing a means. IMO, software piracy is unethical and illegal, but it's not stealing. It's IP piracy. Stealing means that the thief got something for nothing and the victim lost that something and it out the cost of it and the use of it. Piracy means that the pirate got something for nothing and the victim lost control of the distribution of his or her creation and didn't receive money for it. This may indicate a loss of money but is a much smaller percentage than the loss of an actual item because the majority of people who acquire the illegal data or software wouldn't have paid for it either way. There's also a loss in time and development costs that in order to survive will force the ompany or individual who is the victim towork harder and faster to keep up and remain competitive in the marketplace, and to create security features to protect their right to control and profit from the distribution of their creations. There is a difference. Software piracy is illegal and unethical, but it's not theft. Theft would be hacking into the DAZ site, downloading a model, and then deleting it off their server and somehow deleting any backups which are, I'm sure, not all stored online. In other words, theft would most likely require breaking into the DAZ offices and would require stealing something that has not been sold (otherwise I'm sure DAZ cuold contact someone they have a strong relationship with that has purchased the product and retrieve a final copy, if nothing else). I'm not saying this to defend software piracy, but to prevent those of you who refer to it as theft from weakening your own argument by misattributing the damage it causes. The only real similarity is that the perpetrator gets something without paying. To anyone else who reads this thread: I'm only a DAZ broker and I do not represent DAZ, but as a result I have spoken with people at DAZ and I don't get the impression that the company itself would support using virii as a means to stop warez. Not only would that be illegal, it would also cause a huge amount of damage to the reputation of the company itself regardless of who the intended victims are. As I said, I don't speak for DAZ, I'm just trying to clarify that Anton, as far as I know, doesn't speak for DAZ either in this curcumstance, and while the company is opposed to warez, I haven't had any indication that they would be in favour of distributing trojan horses in any way, even secretly, if that were at all possible.