Geoff Schultz" geoff"at wrote:
"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.

BTW I don't use E-Mule, but millions do.

DP

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 in a store has a physical essence and
the other is just bits streaming over the Internet or on a disk.

-- Geoff (ex-software developer)

Just in case you missed the original post, scanning copyright media is also
stealing, as is hitting the Prt Scr key on your keypad in certain
circumstances. Perhaps we should all sue the hardware manufacturers who
invented and marketed the CD/DVD-copying devices to the consumer public?

How about suing NOAA for releasing all these vector and raster charts of the
US coastline worldwide, surely they must be somebody's intellectual
property? Why should a BSB chart of the Eastern Med be so different? Don't
we all pay taxes?


DP