Well, summer is nice. Not that I really do any more, but I'm working and getting payed for it. Beyond that, I'm also only taking one class and thusly doing far less homework. This frees up more time for me to go get on Gaia and discuss complex topics with simple minds and berate them duly.
Here's a sample conversation I had with an idiot to encourage you to come help me in the good fight. The italicized was written by an idiot with the user name of Kwai. The grey is my response.
I think the question arises, is it stealing? No, it's sharing. It is no more a crime to share my $500 software than it is to share my $5 comic books.
Someone's trying to salve his conscience
The net is just a large sharing place for information and that is what software is. This is not about piracy it is about companys adapting to a flux in supply and demand. There is more supply of software because more people are sharing it and thus we want less. Come on look at how inefficient we are; we buy a book, we read it, and what do we do? We leave it to gather dust. So we put it to good use, give it to the public library, they know how to use a little bit of information quicker. Is my library a criminal for sharing? How different is the net from a library? Not much! Well, if sharing software is a crime, they it's time to close down the public library cause they share software, movies, music and books. And I don't see why these things can't be all on the net, free to distribute and use by everyone.
Umm... about that. There's this fundamental difference involved with books to the effect that everyone can't be using a book at once. Further, if a library buys a book and 20 people read it, the author still gets compensation and there is a greater likelihood that one of those readers will either buy the book at a later date or buy a book by that same author. The equivalent of what you're talking about would be running photo-copies of a book for 1,000 people.
You display a fundamental ignorance in the realm of economics bordering on criminal stupidity. It needs to be realized that your POS comic books can be cranked out at a dime a dozen. Software requires years of development with hundreds of developers. The enormous overhead is substantially more than the money required to write a comic book plot, draw it and ink it. Thus, software updates are released annually or every other year while comic books abound by the dozens and most shitty authors can manage to do numerous ones.
Controling the use of any of these forms of human ideas on the net for the sake of greed of some company, is in it's essence Nazi reminicent.
Oh no, he just brought out the Nazis. *throws up hands in defeat*
I hate you Kwai. I hate the fact that you are a moron and you don't know it. And I hate the fact that I am irresistably compelled to respond to your idiocy with logic. Mostly, I hate the fact that this will do nothing to dispel your idiocy and you will continue on in your foolish ways.
So there you have it. The actual thread is here, if you want to read the even higher-quality repartee that followed.
Posted by Vengeful Cynic at June 11, 2003 04:24 AM