But I’m a hobbyist…
The most popular post I've made, has been my mention of Windows XP Black Edition. While nobody was really in favour of my idea, I'm pretty sure it was popular because people were hoping to find a download link... and found me via Google, where I'm currently the #1 result for the search Windows XP Black Edition.
Discussions following that post often lead to statements along the lines of, "I shouldn't have to pay that much, I don't need the software... I want to use it because I'm a hobbyist." Now I've thought long and hard about this and almost posted a comment in the WinXP Black Edition post... instead I felt it would make an interesting topic of conversation.
So let's start with my blanket statement.... My hypothesis if this were scientific in anyway... instead it's just my opinions. "Computer Hobbyists believe that a hobby shouldn't cost them anything."
While looking for links to back that statement up, I found this interesting comment. It's a very similar argument to the statement above. It all comes down to, "Why should we have to spend a bunch of money?!?" I find this mentality rather amusing. There's an interesting blog post although quite old now, on the subject that I also found and one of the comments caught my attention. I've heard this argument made before as well. "Teenagers pirate software and learn it. As adults they now tell their employers to purchase that software because they are already familiar with it." I even had a prof that supported that, he once made the comment, "Obtain the software, feel free to download it... I believe that you should be allowed to pirate software until you graduate" (paraphrased of course).
These are arguments that people make all the time and I dislike them... I think they're sad arguments. They remind me of a cartoon that my fiance's mother sent her.
We're arguing that it's OK for students to pirate software but they can afford to spend money on all these other luxuries. Will I admit that having access to a large amount of software is beneficial... definitely. Yet I don't think piracy is an option. When planning your future, look into what the school offers. I was lucky... my school offered MSDN AA... I know of other schools that did as well. Now I heard the statement, "This makes sense for Microsoft to offer this for such a low price, the students will be familiar with Microsoft products when they graduate". This was very true. A teenager interested in experimenting with various types of software can just ensure that the place where they will pursue "higher education" offers these programs.
Now back to the argument that you shouldn't have to pay ridiculous prices for software because you're a hobbyist. Let's forget the aspect of youth doing this... and let's look at everyone else. Now I have hobbies... I have several hobbies and they all cost me money.
- Computers -- Last week I spent $100 on network cables, a keyboard, usb keypad, etc... toys that I wanted to play with. In our 600sq ft. apartment we have 5 computers, 3 printers, 2 routers, 2 switches, 3 DVD Burners and a crapload of toys and junk... I buy it or barter for it... I don't want into Best Buy and steal a joystick because computers are my hobby and I shouldn't have to pay for my hobby.
- Music -- The fiance just made a mental note to purchase the new Linkin Park CD... I know I'm talking about software piracy here, but this fits. We've spent thousands of dollars on our music interests, including guitars, a piano, drums, a flute, a karaoke machine and at least $500 worth of music books. We didn't walk into the store and pick up the guitar and leave because it was our hobby and we shouldn't have to pay for it.
- Reading -- The ultimate form of relaxation. This month we've spent just under $300 on books... Excessive? Maybe, but I'm almost out of books to read again, so I'll buy more... I could go online and find pirated ebooks but it's not the same as having the real thing. Maybe I should go to Chapters and just pick out the books I want and leave with them.
- Movies -- Another big one for us... We rent $60-70 worth of movies each month and I've been to the theater 4 times this month. We also purchase regularly (I've lost count of the number of titles we have)... This is topped of with multiple DVD players, DVD Recorders, DVRs, VCRs... Guess what... I paid for all of it. Video Games could also go here... over 100 titles, bought and paid for... 5 Different consoles.
- Swords -- My last sword cost me $150. My collection in total has cost me, so far, about $1500.
These are my hobbies... I spend money on any one of them at any given time, if I don't have the money I save up because it's something I want. I've got a shopping list of books and next time I've got extra money, I'll be at Chapters picking up the books on the top of the list. I pay to enjoy my hobbies... If experimenting with software is your hobby you should be willing to pay for it. My friend's hobby is cars... does that give him the right to go out and steal a car? Maybe he should steal your car... because maybe you've stolen his software.
A lot of people make the argument that software (or movies or music) are already paid for by the time they steal them... so they aren't really costing the company anything. These people are making the assumption that the software has already been paid off... The company invests the money up front to see the software through production... relying on making the money back when the software hits the shelves. If the software is pirated by everyone, the company doesn't make the money back. Everyone else has probably paid for the Author's commission on the books I want to read, so it's the same thing... but I bet the same people that pirate software would tell me that stealing a book from Chapters is wrong. Morals seem to disappear when we enter the electronic world...
I think it would be interesting to see how these pirates that feel stealing software because they are hobbyists or because they feel it's too expensive (and I'm not talking about mass piracy... I'm talking about individual piracy)... I'd be interesting to take these individuals and at the end of the week have their employer not pay them. After all, the employers already got the work out of the employee... Why should they bother paying them?
That would be stupid though... the employee wouldn't come back... Software is the same way... steal the software long enough and the company producing the software won't be back. Sure mass piracy is an issue... but Why? Because individuals buy this software... People always say, "But I'm not the problem, it's the guy that produces 5000 copies and sells them that's the problem." Guess what... That guy is selling them to people just like you... They are paying for what you download yourself for free... both are just as wrong. If nobody bought from the guy that's mass producing the pirated software... he'd have no reason to pirate it... He's doing it for individuals... just as you are are doing it for yourself. Neither of you has any more right to it than the other and neither of you are any less guilty.
If you happen to own a business and take part is software piracy, please leave me a note in the comments with your business name... I'd love to stop by and help myself to some of your products. You don't seem to have a problem when you do it to software companies, so let's see what happens when someone does it to you.
not to put too fine a point on it, and not to disagree with your point that hobbies can cost money too (because i agree with that), but you seem to have fallen for the copyright maximalist dogma that copyright infringement equals theft… they are not the same, they are not comparable, they are both against the law but that’s about as close as they get to each other…
That’s a very common argument that’s made in the and it’s something that I completely disagree with…
Previously, when you bought software on a CD, I may have agreed that it was copyright infringement. At least on the part of the person making copies of the software for distribution. I still feel that it is theft by the person receiving the software… They are stealing intellectual property and as we move towards more online stores where you pay and download the product and a physical medium never exists… The electronic copy of the software is the product. Taking a product is theft. In the simplest form… that’s what it comes down to… Electronic Distribution has turned has turned software itself into a product and when you illegally download the software you are taking that product for yourself.
The problem is we’re dealing with laws that were never meant to define these actions… laws that were meant to define things like producing a copy of a book. Software is a product as much as it is intellectual property… The laws need to be changed to recognize this because Software Piracy is theft. The only people telling themselves otherwise are the pirates because “copyright infringement” is a much more gentle term.
In this case, HTRegz sounds like he’s supporting Copyright reembursment along the lines of possible personal investment.
He sounds more like he’s expecting to copyright something one day and ask for those royalties too.
Putting that aside, would you still be so supportive of 100%, all the time, always, forever – inteligent material payments ?
A formula is being worked out, but as the feeling goes – it doesn’t feel right paying all 100%.
Knowledge IS supposed to be free. Remember that being in the technology (super copying industry, knowledge wise) field.
@htregz
“The laws need to be changed to recognize this because Software Piracy is theft. The only people telling themselves otherwise are the pirates because “copyright infringement” is a much more gentle term.”
the pirates AND the US supreme court… theft deprives the previous owner of the item stolen and the opportunity to subsequently use and/or sell it – no such thing happens with copyright infringement because the infringer has simply made a copy… one could argue that the infringement deprives the owner of the opportunity to sell to the infringer but that falls into the lost-sale fallacy where one assumes that the infringer would have paid for it if s/he had been unable to infringe…
of course, then there’s whole question of calling them pirates in the first place, since piracy was a crime all it’s own and generally involved boats…
i don’t think i’ll engage further about the rights and wrongs of copyright infringement, however, seeing as we both live in a country that officially recognizes some forms of it as protected under the law (re: private copying)…
on the flip-side
@bakez
“Knowledge IS supposed to be free.”
fine, i’d like to know you’re credit card number, name, phone number and address so why don’t you shoot it on over here for me, would you? i should be free to know those things after all, right?
@Kurt
“fine, i’d like to know you’re credit card number, name, phone number and address so why don’t you shoot it on over here for me, would you? i should be free to know those things after all, right?”
HA riiight
access to anyones Name, phone number and address is already available. Seperate, authorized credentials for financial access have never been “public knowledge”. Any organized study for the greater good of all kind is though – The Ethical Law.
I “could” send mine, as along as we had a completely honest, non-malicous exchange of both personal data’s. Are you ready to go to those trusting lengths ? Thats about the equivilant that most publishers feel. That they could release their products for free, but would never see the return – yes if based on todays purchasing system.
The entire ‘purchase’ process though is being reevaluated from single, personal purchasing, to mass-abundant licencing. I’ll let the lawyers take it from there ….
Roll on Kanada
The whole “you wouldn’t steal a car” argument is getting kind of old. I would for example not steal your friends car. But would I paint my new 1:12 Mustang scale model with the same paintjob that your friend might have developed? Sure I would.
Would I still sleep at night? Of course, and so would he.
Perhaps Stian has hit the proverbial nail on the head as far as my belief system goes…
I don’t see software as a paint job… I see software as the car…I believe we need to redefine it so that society sees it as the car.. Software is a tangible product… The majority of the population can look at a paint job and replicate it… the majority of the population cannot look at software and replicate it…
This is the problem I have, in the grand scheme of things… Developing software is no different than say building a new car…. However it is quite different from a paint job. Law makers need to wake up and realize this, accept it, and enforce it.
And if I hear one more person say,”If only they charged less”… No one says that about a $500,000.00 car and then goes and takes one… Software is a product… taking a product without paying for it is theft… I could care less about the IP argument that people want to make so that they can sleep better at night… it’s BS.
@htregz
“I see software as the car…I believe we need to redefine it so that society sees it as the car.. ”
sorry, i’m a software developer by profession and even *I* don’t see software as a car, nor do i care to be told by society to start thinking that way…
the only reasonable way i can see to think of software as a car is if you invoke a fictional world where matter replicators are plentiful, and then ask ourselves what society would think about the practice of replicating cars…
until such time as the same physical rules apply to both the physical and digital worlds, comparing items from each is absurd…
“Software is a tangible product… ”
software is not a tangible product by definition… software is called software, rather than hardware, precisely because it is NOT a physical object… only physical objects can be tangible…
“the majority of the population cannot look at software and replicate it…”
the majority of computers replicate software simply by installing it… they do it again when they run it… and once more when swapping it out of physical memory in order to execute something else… computers as we know them would not be able to operate without the ability to replicate software…
Kurt:
You’re accepting constraints from a pre-digital world… constraints that needed to be adjusted and re-evaluated when we entered the digital age but weren’t. When I see software, I see a product… plain and simple… and taking a product is theft…
As for computers replicating software, of course they can… I never said they couldn’t… I said people can’t replicate it… I don’t mean copy and paste.. I mean go and make your own copy of it.. write the code yourself.
@htregz
“You’re accepting constraints from a pre-digital world…”
if anything it seems like you’re the one accepting the constraints of the pre-digital world and trying to force them onto the digital one… they’re different worlds, they have different constraints and therefore require different rules of conduct…
“When I see software, I see a product… plain and simple… and taking a product is theft…”
copying != taking… at least not in any meaningful sense of either word…
Kurt:
“copying != taking… at least not in any meaningful sense of either word…”
Right there you are the pre-digital constraints… It is taking
ok Kurt and HT get a room now
you’re both going to tare a hole in each owns cerebral complex gravity collapse.
the issue at hand is everyones definition of “copying”
and further out ability to compromise both as appropriate.