Quote:
Originally Posted by nekokami
In your mind, is it morally necessary to compensate someone for their labor, assuming they have not voluntarily donated that labor?
I believe this is the heart of the matter we are supposedly discussing.
|
I really don't know the answer to that question...at least not as far as making it a sweeping societal norm.
I think people that make things should get paid for what they do if they ask for it, sure.
I don't feel any deep-seated compulsion to do this however.
I certainly do not believe anyone should be beaten and broken into paying me for what i do *as long as they aren't costing me any money*.
That is to say, if I had a streaming movie service that I charged for, and folks were somehow viewing the movies without paying, I've got a problem (a very real one) because i have to pay for these people's usage of band.
On the other hand, if a bunch of people using their own resources are passing this stuff around, it doesn't cost me anything. If it is fairly obvious to these people where they can get he stuff from and pay for it and they don't, I can't even in a sane, honest state of mind claim I've lost a sale...its really obvious that they aren't going to pay for it.
And, as I get paid everyday, and enough to not struggle thru life, I think its fair to say that I'm not being hurt by this. I'm not at the food bank, I'm not homeless...etc.
as I said in another thread (I think you were a participant) I wasn't always like this. Initially, we went on a tear hunting these people all over the internet.
What happened was, we found one of these guys, did the take down...and for some reason, I actually emailed the guy and asked him 1. how he cracked our Copy protection and 2. *why* he did it.
And no it wasn't a "tell me or we'll sue you to oblivion" thing...I just asked.
I even told him (and this was the truth, at the time) that i saw no problem with HIM figuring out how HE could do this for himself...he'd "earned" it...my problem was with the X number of people that had not.
Anyway, he told us how he did it, and told me why: because he could. it was a challenge. It seemed a "waste" to him to NOT package it all up after all of the hours he put into it so that others might benefit, if they wished.
Now, this is...sort of robin hood logic to me, but I sort of just filed it away for awhile. He promised to behave and we got some R & D out of it all, so that was that.
Now, morally, this guy believed he was doing a service. He didn't seem to think it was wrong for us to sell our product...at all.
He also felt that people that paid for it should be able to move it to another computer without asking us first. When I mentioned that I did not agree because it was "my software" he simply said "so what do people get from you when they give you money, then? A promise?"
I had never looked at it like that, of course.
I've had many "run-ins" and discussions about the nature of IP with many people that I consider both honest and intellegent, and while the "moral" angle rarely comes up, i does from time to time...with the end result being turned on the content providers, sort of like this:
"Is it morally justified to deny others something simply because you don't want them to have it, even if they use their own resources to acquire and maintain it? If there is no physical restraint whatsoever from them doing this, and it costs you nothing for them to have it, either in an instant or on an ongoing basis, what moral grounds do you have for denying someone this?"
I honestly don't know that there IS a moral leg to stand on here. I mean, I *know* there are people out there using our stuff and we haven't received a dime for it...but it doesn't cost me a damned thing.
Every time we release a new version, we sell it. I cannot *honestly* say that I am actually being hurt in any measurable way by this, outside of
desire to have these people's money as my own and it honestly isn't something I lose sleep over anymore.
As far as I know, no one is re-branding our stuff and selling it, or selling it and sending those customers to us for support so, I mean, its really hard to shake a fist of moral outrage here.
I guess if anyone should be upset, it would be paying customers. However they seem not to mind because they can ask us to help them if they need it, or request features, or call us on the phone and get someone to help their Grandma use one of our apps.
You know what DOES piss them off? Our DRM scheme...which is why we're working to get rid of it.