IMHO at the end of day I would take a guess that everyone has copied some software or at the very least installed some software using a disk that doesn’t belong to them, none of us are saints. Cracked software, keygens, patches, etc will always be around, the guys that make these things I presume see it as a challenge and not a way of getting back at the software developers.
What I have never understood is when you obviously have some real talent instead of the software developers employing these people they often end up being prosecuted. Case in point that guy who cracked the DVD protection. I say ‘guy’ but when he cracked it he was only 15 years of age and did it not for malicious reasons but simply to allow him to view DVD’s on his computer. Now that is one hell of a talented person but he ends up in jail for what he did. Instead of locking him up for however many years, why didn’t the company who design the DVD protection give this guy a job. He is obviously very clever. I think his name if my memory serves me correct is Jon Lech Johanson.
As for MP3’s and Kazaa. I use Kazaa all the time but when you look at it, I can’t understand how Kazaa can get away with what they do. Not only do they give the world the ability to share files, you can specify what kind of files you want to search for, whether it be a song or a document or software. It seems very blatant to me but I use it and I’m glad it exists.
When it comes to MP3’s, one way of looking at it might be like this, a point a friend of mine brought up in a conversation. When a music CD is ripped and converted to MP3 format it is not a 1:1 copy of the original. There are slight differences in the waveform, not enough to make the MP3 audio sound different when you listen to it but technically speaking it is not a digital copy of the audio CD. Therefore if your MP3 copy, ripped directly or downloaded from a P2P program, is not digitally the same as the original, how can it a copy. The only similarities between the original audio CD and the ripped MP3 copy is the sound coming out of your speakers and not the digital footprint.
I can understand the software developers being a bit p!$$ed off at people getting a full blown copy of their hard work but they haven’t paid of it. If a totally new format was introduced, maybe even working on a totally new drive system, if it was common knowledge this format was introduced because it prevents copies being made, then no-one is going to purchase this new system. The people who make CD burners and the people who sell blank CD-r(w)’s are happy, as because of the boom in sales, they have no doubt made a lot of money but with such a huge success there will always be a way of using this equipment for what is technically illegal uses. If you only used your CD burner to make copies of what you can legally make copies of, well I don’t know about you but I know I wouldn’t get through a spindle of 50 blanks as quick as I do. There would be no copying software you don’t own, ripping DVD’s you don’t own (Blockbusters, etc), copying audio CD’s you don’t own……etc….etc.
They have to take the good with the bad, as I would take a guess that at least 70% of blank CD-r’s that are sold are used to make illegal copies of things. You don’t hear them complaining, saying you shouldn’t use their product to make illegal copies.
I’m not sure what the answer is but I would say that when it comes to MP3’s it’s a victim of it’s own success, high quality with small file size. When ever one song is obtained via Kazaa and not purchased then yeah, the music people are losing out but I doubt they will go out of business. “Oh no, we’ve only made 1.2 billion dollars this year instead of the normal 2.4 billion thanks to Kazaa and those damn MP3’s”
They still sell $h!t loads of CD’s. For a birthday present you don’t want to give someone a burnt CD, you’ll want to give them the original. You may buy the original because you want the packaging it comes in.
At the end of the day, if they didn’t want people to have a 700Mb storage medium, capable of copying not only audio but data CD’s and more recently ripped DVD’s…..then they shouldn’t have introduced it to the general public. But they did and they are happy to count up the cash when it rolls in from sales of burners and blank disks. I have no doubt the price of DVD burners and the blank media will continue to fall. Are they going to be complaining about that when it becomes more and more popular??
Just my point of view.
….DreeM
