While I am not an advocate of software piracy(I actually pay my
shareware fees!) I think there are off topic arguments on both sides.
I am astounded by the increasing greed of corporate interests with
leadership coming from the software companies.
Adobe PhotoShop is a commercial software intended for use in making
money by a company. Its exorbitant fee is only understandable for
that purpose. Hobbyist use should maybe get smaller fees. Microsoft
charges a lot more to government and corporations and periodically
inspects them to make sure more copies are not being used than were
purchased. As for sympathy for rich corporations that regularly
donate copies of their software to charity and deduct full retail
from their taxes sharing millions of dollars of their tax burden with
the rest of us, well, I am afraid I do not have much.
More and more software is being written so that if you periodically
network your desktop and your lap top to move files it will detect
and disable the second copy on the laptop. Each copy must be paid for.
If your computer has not been upgraded and can only use older
software which the company no longer provides or supports, someone
who shares their copy of the old software which is no longer
available can be prosecuted. Happens all the time.
The so called electronic book is a case in point. The text is only
usable on your device. If you loan your book to a friend it must be
accompanied by your reading device. You can no longer read any of
your other books on the device. The text cannot be transferred to
another device. This is a big change from traditional practices.
The music industry does not want you to loan a CD or make a cassette
to use in your car, listen to a CD online that you already own or
hear a tune anywhere without someone paying a fee.
Using the same logic you could be prosecuted for loaning a hammer to
a neighbor. It is probably a small leap from the Canon sensor in the
eyepiece that senses what you are looking at for autofocus to
something similar which will scan your retina to be sure the camera
is only used by the registered owner. So the kind of generous people
on this list who loan their Oly gear are probably the next targets.
This will be especially cool with digital cameras that are regularly
linked to a computer so that the infraction can reported by software
over the web with no knowledge on your part. It is only a matter of
time.
Sorry for the rant.
Winsor
--
Winsor Crosby
Long Beach, California, USA
mailto:wincros@xxxxxxxxxxx
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