Marc Horowitz <marc@cygnus.com> writes:
As long as it's cheaper or more convenient to buy digital media from the publisher than to copy it yourself, the piracy problem basically doesn't exist. [...] I'm unconvinced that there really is an Internet copyright problem, outside of traditional media publishers inventing it.
That principle works to some extent, particularly for the bandwidth impoverished, and the currently bloated games software trying to fill CD-ROMs with unnecessary junk for one presumes this very purpose. Leave the bandwidth a while, and the problem may arise again. I wonder at 2c/minute, say 2k/sec (28.8 modem) that's 6Mb/$ for me (don't have free local call UK side). That's $100 for a 600Mb CD! So as long as the CD costs under $100 and the unnecessary bloatware is hard for a warez hacker to strip out, that makes it worth buying the CD. Another advantage of having the CD is that it's a backup copy, and you can keep large stuff (say electronic copies of manuals) on it without chewing up disk space which is more expensive. Be interesting to see what happens to software copyright as bandwidth gets more plentiful, as huge solid state mass storage gets cheaper, and as information becomes harder to track with widespread crypto, and nicer anonymous protocols enabled by high bandwidth everywhere come online. Adam -- Now officially an EAR violation... Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`