Doug's Inner Net News
News and views from a software developer's perspective
Monday, June 03, 2002
Are the music and film content owners a bunch of Chicken Littles, or what? One thing is for sure, they always see the glass as half empty. Spider-Man has been a huge success at the box office. That, to me, sounds like good reason to bring out the Champagne. Instead, we get more whining about Internet users who are sharing degraded copies of the movie. The software industry has learned years ago that there will always be a residual amount of piracy, and that a small amount of piracy can even be good, because it helps to grow your product's awareness among potential customers. The goal of the software industry has been to reduce piracy to an acceptable level, not try to eradicate it completely. I hope the music and film industry will learn this lesson soon.
Yes, I admit it. I downloaded and use software that I haven't paid for. Some of the software I haven't paid for includes Internet Explorer, Mozilla, AOL Instant Messenger, Emacs, PuTTY, NetBeans, Java Development Kit, FreeAmp, Eudora, Outlook Express, Real Player Basic, Acrobat Reader, OpenOffice, Windows Media Player, and many more. For some reason, the Business Software Alliance finds it very distrurbing that so many people download so much software without paying for it. Why?
News and views from a software developer's perspective
Monday, June 03, 2002Are the music and film content owners a bunch of Chicken Littles, or what? One thing is for sure, they always see the glass as half empty. Spider-Man has been a huge success at the box office. That, to me, sounds like good reason to bring out the Champagne. Instead, we get more whining about Internet users who are sharing degraded copies of the movie. The software industry has learned years ago that there will always be a residual amount of piracy, and that a small amount of piracy can even be good, because it helps to grow your product's awareness among potential customers. The goal of the software industry has been to reduce piracy to an acceptable level, not try to eradicate it completely. I hope the music and film industry will learn this lesson soon.
8:45:54 AM 
Yes, I admit it. I downloaded and use software that I haven't paid for. Some of the software I haven't paid for includes Internet Explorer, Mozilla, AOL Instant Messenger, Emacs, PuTTY, NetBeans, Java Development Kit, FreeAmp, Eudora, Outlook Express, Real Player Basic, Acrobat Reader, OpenOffice, Windows Media Player, and many more. For some reason, the Business Software Alliance finds it very distrurbing that so many people download so much software without paying for it. Why?
8:25:27 AM