Discontinued Software, The Law, Morals and Hypercard

[Mathewson]

Scott Kane wrote:

"LOL!  It's even nicer to bring a pathetic crack site
down.  The ones that really make me laugh, when I'm
searching for cracks of my software (funny how Google
lists crack sites, but everyday business find it so 
hard to get a listing..) is when they list all their
"warez" and put a copyright message at the bottom
of each page.  <g>

Scott"

I could, at least potentially, understand somebody pirating
software for profit, BUT what I cannot understand is why
the web seems to be full of software that has been pirated
for no reason at all beyond that "it is there".

And I do agree that pirating software is morally wrong. 

My "moral loophole" (dangerous terminology) is where a
piece of software is no longer available but which is still
desired and required. 

Unfortunately, converting an old Hypercard stack to a RR
one is very rarely simply a case of opening the HC stack
with RR - were that the case nobody would have avy reason
whatsoever to need the Hypercard development environment.

It seems bloody-minded and churlish of Apple to have
withdrawn Hypercard completely - after all, they could
still make the odd buck here and there.

There is another factor that has not been mentioned in this
discussion so far: that of what I would term 'legal parity'
across international boundaries. This can lead all sorts of
innocent end-users unwittingly into all sorts of traps. 

For example: I recently authored a CD-ROM (using Metacard)
containing 60 Bulgarian literary 'themes' for 14 year-old
Bulgarians to prepare themselves for Grammar-school
entrance exams. These are copyright under Bulgarian law.
However, if somebody picks up a copy of my CD and goes for
a day trip to Turkey or Macedonia, as long as they can
demonstrate that they were outwith Bulgaria at that time,
there is absolutely no legal redress should they pirate the
whole shebang and market it back in Bulgaria under their
label. Needless to say, I have covered 25 percent of
production costs so far! What a business genius!

The other problem is that the US is percieved (no, surely
not?) as a bully in other parts of the world - and it may
be in certain political and economic spheres - so, by
extension, a lot of US software legislation is seen as a US
imposition on the 'have nots': in Bulgaria pirating
software is a national sport and seen as a way for the
"poor" Bulgarians to get their own back on the US. I have
discovered this to my cost when advertising my "one-step
program to software legality"; i.e. chuck out MS Windows
and MS Office and install Ubuntu Linux and Open Office for
the price of half a week's food-shopping.

sincerely, Richmond Mathewson
__________________________________________________
See Mathewson's software at:

http://members.maclaunch.com/richmond/default.html
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