"Dennis Pogson" wrote in
:

Bill Kearney wrote:
Most of these BSB charts can be obtained in digital form anyway, by
resorting to a file-sharing program such as Emule, therefore saving
the time and cost of scanning.

Right, so you're saying just steal them instead of paying.

I don't use BSB charts, but they are there if anyone wants them. Also,
if my neighbour offers me a copy of some well-known software, and I
offer him a copy of another application in return for his generosity,
I don't regard myself as having "stolen" anything.

Perhaps if you spent some time studying the P&L accounts of the
leading software companies, you would see what I mean.

So just what do the P&L statements of the leading SW companies show? And
what if these aren't from the *leading* software companies? Does that
still count?

If you traded your software to another person, and both of you destroyed
copies of said software on your respective machines, I would agree with
you. Otherwise you've profited by maintaining both copies.

Simply because people walk into stores and steal things, doesn't make it
right. The stores mark everything up to cover the shrinkage. All of us
who don't steal the products end up paying for it. There's no difference
other than the one is a store has a physical essence and the other is just
bits streaming over the Internet or on a disk.

-- Geoff (ex-software developer)