copying soft/hard ware

[Fraser, Colin J]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Don Tillman [mailto:don at till.com]
> Sent: 14 November 1998 05:02
> To: space_banana at hotmail.com
> Cc: synth-diy at mailhost.bpa.nl
> Subject: Re: copying soft/hard ware
> 
> Even if the patent was still in force, it's not stealing, it's
> infringement.  Very different.  With infringement it's up to the
> patentee to sucessfully sue you for some appropriate damages.  With
> stealing, the police show up at your door.  

If copying software is stealing, then patent infringement must be stealing
too.
What is stolen are the proceeds of the commercial use of intellectual
property.

This is the biggest difficulty in preventing the theft - you can't put a
padlock and chain round a piece of information.
You don't come back to find your software / design has been stolen.
The theft is invisible, because the thing that is stolen has no physical
presence.

This is why so many people don't have a problem with software piracy - if
they were never going to buy the software anyway, it doesn't make any
difference if they take a copy of it - there is no cost to the maker for a
lost sale that never would have been...

The arguement that people wouldn't steal a fridge / tv or whatever the same
way as they steal software doesn't hold either.
If theft of white goods was as easy and generally unpunished as software
theft, most people would have a widescreen tv in every room...

I wonder, if there was a web-site with a fantastic repository of custom
synth schematics and pcb layouts, and the site owner asked for a 'shareware'
fee if someone actually built one his circuits, how much cash would he see ?

Colin f