Computer code Is not property and can’t b stolen

[Don]

Don,It is easy to see the difference.

If I had 200$ and now I do not have it then it is a different case.
In the case of piracy Microsoft never had the 200$ and never knew that they are going to get it.

Are you serious? So your criteria is that if someone doesn't know they are being cheated then it's not theft?

If some people hack my bank account and transfer money from my account to their own account then it means that I do not have the money and it is clearly possible that I made previous decision based on the assumption that I have the money.

This is basically a zero sum game - and you are really sweeping the important issues under the rug with some simplistic hand waving. I though this was as obvious as a heart attack but I really surprised that there are so many people that don't know the difference between honesty and dishonesty with respect to code theft and piracy.

You know that money in the bank is yours and you happen to notice when it's taken. What if I could take your money out of the bank and you not notice it? Or I find a way to take it without your knowing it is missing? Does that mean you were not hurt and it's not theft?

When we talk about theft we are talking primary about financial hurt - not necessary physical hurt or stress - like you would get if someone breaks into your home and takes your piggy bank. There is NO difference between taking money from someone or not giving money that they SHOULD have. A simply thought experiment - pay for the software, then take the money back. Does that somehow transform this into a crime? It wasn't a crime before because they didn't actually know how much they could have had?

Here is another thought experiment that shows how far off your thinking is on this. Suppose you spend years developing the most incredible piece of software but it's specialized, only the printing industry can make use of it. But it's quite special and it works with a certain type of printing equipment. You finally get to a point where you can market it and hire 50 people to help you polish it, document it, package it, and salesmen to sell it to printing companies. You put it on the market and discover that you are getting ZERO sales. After some detective work you discover that the companies that make the printing equipment that works with your software are giving away free copies of your software which works with their equipment.

So you confront them, and their response is all the argument that you just gave me! They say, you didn't know they were going to buy the software, so you didn't miss it. It didn't "cost" you anything nobody was hurt. It's not theft because nothing was "taken" from you. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but it takes a pretty ignorant person to not see how this is exactly the same as any other kind of theft.

You said that in your bank account you have the expectation of the money being there - a silly argument because that doesn't define theft - but even going with this you have to admit that in my example you ALSO have an expectation that the money will be there from sales - you made all your plans based on that. The only difference is that the accounting is less precise - you cannot easily nail down how much this printing company stole from you but the amount has nothing to do with how theft is defined - nor whether you know it's being stolen or not.

There is another issue you also completely ignore. The price of a product is influenced by THEFT of the product. You are essentially paying for the dishonesty of others. Just because it's not easy to precisely nail down how much extra you are paying, don't mean that you are in fact hurting honest people when you are dishonest.

It's like that with paying taxes too. If you cheat or don't pay at all, other people have to cover it. The honest people have to cover the price for people who are dishonest. So you think software theft is a victimless crime I assume, but you are way off base here.

stealing from me 200$ that I had and preventing me to earn 200$ that I did not know earlier that I could earn are not the same thing.

There is another difference. Many of the people who pirate a piece of software would not have the ability or the willingness to buy it. So in many cases piracy really does not make any real difference (and it can make some positive differences such as increasing a product's popularity).

So essentially you are saying that if you don't want software badly enough to pay for it, then it's ok to steal it. What is really hilarious about this scenario to me is that it has to be based solely on the "honor" system - and since it is illegal you are suggesting that dishonorable people use the honor system. This is an exaggeration, but it's like asking the mafia to "only kill people who deserve it" and we will leave that decision up to you - we know you will do the right thing!

Sorry Don, but it's not as black and white as you want to believe... which is why it can't be classified as outright theft.

There are a lot of things in life that are not black and white and fall into a grey area or are a matter of conscience and not so clear, but this is NOT one of them. There is absolutely nothing here that is ambiguous.

With attitudes like this I can easily see why there has been so much resistance in the computer chess community over trying to maintain high standards of ethics. It really depresses me.

[rbarreira]

So essentially you are saying that if you don't want software badly enough to pay for it, then it's ok to steal it

No, I already said several times that I'm not making statements about what is acceptable or not. My only argument in this thread has been to agree that "theft" does not cover situations like these. Please stop putting words in my mouth especially when I have been quite explicit about that...

I'm not surprised that your rants are all offtopic as you stated you don't even know what the thread is about.

[Don]

So essentially you are saying that if you don't want software badly enough to pay for it, then it's ok to steal it

No, I already said several times that I'm not making statements about what is acceptable or not. My only argument in this thread has been to agree that "theft" does not cover situations like these. Please stop putting words in my mouth especially when I have been quite explicit about that...

I'm not surprised that your rants are all offtopic as you stated you don't even know what the thread is about.

Hey,

I am not necessary responding just to you. I am responding to the thread subject and the concept that software cannot be stolen. I completely disagree with that. And I hardly see how this is off topic, but it was sure to happen that someone would cry off topic sooner or later when someone disagree's with them.

If it's just a matter of semantics, then it's just a stupid discussion not worth having. I don't care if you call software theft something else, it's still theft. If you have a better word for it then let's hear it.

[BubbaTough]

then it's just a stupid discussion not worth having.

Of course it is not worth having . When someone logs into a computer chess forum full of programmers (many professional programmers) and essentially says there is no reason for people to be professional programmers, well, its hard for me to interpret it as anything other than trying to create a reaction. Its like logging on to a basketball website and saying all athletes are dumb.

-Sam

[fern]

"Because Aleynikov did not ‘assume physical control' over anything when he took the source code, and because he did not thereby ‘deprive [Goldman] of its use,'.....

This is a very weird argument.
In objects of the mind there is no a matter of a physical substance.
Neither you can say the owner still have it after the third party appropriation. If the code was aimed to make a profit, it is of the essence of the matter to keep a monopoly of its use. If everybody can get it, you cannot sell it. In software I guess what matter is the availability
Same if the code is not for sale but it is a tool for selling or commercial operations.
This I say does not means I changed my opinion about the entirely different issue of taking an idea to improve it.

Fern

[Uri Blass]

Don
1)I also do not claim that piracy is acceptable but only that it is not the same as theft.
I do not justify piracy and it is illegal but
theft from my point of view is worse than piracy(assuming we talk about the same money that the victim lost).

2)In the example of the bank I know that I have the money and exactly how much money I have.
I think that it is different from the case that I expect to sell something but do not know that I am going to sell it or how much I am going to sell.

Losing constant sum of 100,000$ that I did not expect to lose is worse than losing a future gain of 100,000$ when initially I did not know if the gain is 50,000$
or 100,000$ or 150,000$ because I am not going to assume for my decisions before the loss that I have 100,000$ in the second case because I know that even with no stealing I may get only 50,000$.

[BubbaTough]

Errr....I glanced at the article. It was source code taken of a very private, very proprietary piece of trading software worth millions to the company right? Does not really seem the same as downloading a piece of illegal music in terms of scale of damages. This seems more analogous to theft of intellectual property than anything else. I have no idea if there is a legal difference between theft of Muffins out of someones unlocked car (property) and theft of someones trade secrets worth millions out of the company vault.

-Sam

[Daniel Shawul]

Software piracy is very common where I come from I am not endorsing this or anything but it is pretty stupid for any company to expect a 20000$ check for a single licence..The project itself won't make that much in a year but it has got to be done anyway. The local software companys are pretty tight thouhg but they don't charge much,100$ max maybe.

[Dave_N]

I think source code is property and the contents of an individuals hard drive are property.

The reasons are quite clear

1) If person B takes source code (by whatever method) from person A and
then takes the source code and builds the software and completes the project before the original author (using a team or whatever method) and then sells the software then obviously the original inventor will lose money because potential customers will have already bought the project from someone else.

2) A photograph of a blueprint for a machine is considered to be a theft in most circumstances I know about. Source code meets the requirements for more than just a design plan.

3) The philosophy of work. The victim of the code theft worked to create the project, and if somebody obtains the product of the labour without consent of the author then that person has effectively performed all that work for free.

[Don]

Don
1)I also do not claim that piracy is acceptable but only that it is not the same as theft.
I do not justify piracy and it is illegal but
theft from my point of view is worse than piracy(assuming we talk about the same money that the victim lost).

2)In the example of the bank I know that I have the money and exactly how much money I have.
I think that it is different from the case that I expect to sell something but do not know that I am going to sell it or how much I am going to sell.

Losing constant sum of 100,000$ that I did not expect to lose is worse than losing a future gain of 100,000$ when initially I did not know if the gain is 50,000$
or 100,000$ or 150,000$ because I am not going to assume for my decisions before the loss that I have 100,000$ in the second case because I know that even with no stealing I may get only 50,000$.

In other words if I worked at a convenience store and discovered that you had just won the lottery, I could tell you that you didn't and keep your ticket. Since you didn't know anything about the win, I didn't really still millions of dollars from you, just the 1 dollar for the ticket. In fact I could give you the dollar and my conscience would be clear?

So the deciding factor is only if you are aware of a theft and the exact amount of it? The amount you cannot calculate because it's not accounted for is not relevant?

I really don't think that morally it's any different. You are basically making a distinction based on how much you "hurt" someone. For example if you could steal a million from a billionaire without him knowing about it, he probably wouldn't miss the money, you did not hurt him, it's not theft?

Of course a given theft amount can hurt some people more than others, but that doesn't change the definition of theft. If you steal someones life savings it will hurt them more than if you steal a small part of a rich persons surplus, but if you start making moral judgments based on your own personal estimation of how much you think they need it, you are in a low place. You don't really want to put yourself in the same company with insurance fraud, tax evasions, etc who justify this sort of thing because your one case of fraud probably doesn't destroy someones life or make anyone noticeably poorer. That is a very odd way of thinking about theft. Would you steal 1 million dollars if you could take just 1 penny from 100 million people? It's still stealing 1 million dollars.