Hi!

What do you have to say about copyrigt.

I have been using a pirated win 98 and recently I started havings doubts about it. I consider it unethical to use something whose creator didn't wanted me to use it for free.

What do you have to say.

No doubts... it's illegal.

For definitive information about copyrights (and copywrongs!), see e.g. the (US) copyright-office website at http://www.loc.gov.

If you consider it unethical, don't do it.

I think people should decide for themselves what they think they should do and not do. Do not depend on what other people or laws say. Think yourself about what you do and what benefits, harm, or other consequences it may cause to you and other people you care about.

just wanted to disscuss before making any decisions. Wont use pirated softwares, movies and songs. Hard work went in to them and its the right of the creator to sell or not to sell.

I think the consensus seems to be "do what you think is right."

It doesn't matter what the consensus says
you should do
what the law says is right

and from the LQ rules :-
Posts containing information about cracking, piracy, warez, fraud or any topic that could be damaging to either LinuxQuestions.org or any third party will be immediately removed.

floppy

I agree. Copyright law is one of the few laws that actually does exist for a demonstratably-good purpose, and it is one that nearly all of us in our profession benefit from. In other words, we get paid because someone else pays for that "stupid program we've been struggling for a month to get to work!" If customers didn't do that, then our cubicles would be dark and we would not be sitting in them! We would not be hacking Linux at night. We would not be in college.

Money comes from sales, directly or indirectly. Period.

Employees really do not realize just how insulated their lives can be: payroll checks arrive like clockwork .. it's the law, of course .. and no one thinks about where they come from or if they will come. But sometimes you see the CEO or members of the Executive Board walking around with very stressed-out looks on their faces. When they see you, they force a smile. If you do not know what it means to worry about "making payroll," then I certainly hope that you never will.

Thieves routinely find all kinds of "reasons" to explain why it's "okay for them" to be stealing ... although they might get quite incensed if they come home from a day of thievery and find their car is now missing from the driveway. Somehow the rules never seem to apply in both directions.

Programmers, of all people, should not be stealing software. Because they're stealing it from one another. If you have never had to worry about where dinner was going to come from, then I hope you never will.

True. Whether you agree with it or not, the law states that you should not pirate software or steal services or goods. No amount of self justification will change that. It is theft.

YAY! Someone who thinks like me.

I get tired of seeing people justify why its ok to steal software. Things from "I wasn't going to buy it anyways" to "THey make money anyways whats one more game" or "its not physical so its ok" meh I hate when people justify what they did even when its wrong.

not to take sides cause i'm able to justify "rightously" with both sides ...
but sometimes i'm wondering what will be the todays situation if things and laws like "copyright" and its kind were implemented with strictly full force(or near full force) ever since , lets say , 1985 ??

let us assume there was no difference between one crime and another... they are all: breaking the law!
so if you steal your friends car, steal your parents money, murder the husband of the girl you so love :-S... or copy a win98 cd...
you are breaking the law! and from that aspect guilty in one sence or another.
copying cd's is a lot easier to get by with than murdering - i'll agree on that one, but still, that does not mean that it is ok. you do not have permission to use something, you do not use it.
so what is keeping you from registering you 'copy' of the product you are using? hmmm... let me guess... you know exactly that the copy you have is illegal!!

a few years ago i had to downgread from win2k to win98, delete hundreds of songs, etc... just to get my computer to being fully legal... and it hurt man... can tell you that, it really was not easy pressing that delete button...
but man it feels good afterwards :-)
it is legal, anybody can accuse me of having illegal copies of i-dont-know-what, and i can say... YOU ARE WRONG... HA :-)

copyright is a good thing -- as long as it is interpreted correctly.

in an unregulated and competitive economy, software has a price of zero because -- once written -- it costs almost nothing to copy and redistribute a program over the internet. but if a programmer can't collect any revenue from his work, he won't put any effort it. in such an economy, there would be no software. so even if copyright comes at a cost (the monopoly it creates) it is necessary in order to stimulate economic progress.

but this is not the whole truth. first of all, A LOT of software, including linux, was and is written by thousands of people day in and day out, even though they do not get rewarded monetarily. of course linux is copyrighted, but not in the sense that you are not allowed to copy. it uses copyright to _ensure_ that you are allowed to copy, forever (this is the copyleft principle). secondly, while it is true that without copyright a programmer can't charge a price for the subsequent copies of her program, she could still charge a price for the very first copy! As long as it costs a minimal amount of money to redistribute copies (e.g. for bandwidth, CDs, or time), that first copy can be extremely valuable. this is partly why some programmers get paid for writing free software.

so if copyleft does not impede progress then copying is not harmful to the economy. of course it is harmful to some businesses (and their employees), but this is only part of the economy, and software businesses are often harmful to the economy themselves because they waste a lot of resources on the protection of their monopoly position (e.g. by using inefficient closed standards).

of course I don't like to break the law, and since there is enough free software out there (despite the unfair competition) that I can use to get my work done, I don't have to. but if the law was the only moral standard of our society, what kind of a world do you think would we live in?

additionally, when software companies use words like "pirates" or "thieves" they intend to influence your moral and raise your willingness to pay for their products by making you feel guilty if you copy. what they don't tell you is that most of the times they would rather have you use a "pirated" version than a free/open source/proprietary equivalent (or nothing).

comparing ms with linux with the aspect of copyright at payment...
look at linux... free, open source, well supported...

... and WAY more secure :-)

seems to me like unpaid work is better than paid ms guys

*smile*

Yea M$ would probably rather you paid for win98, but they would especially
not want you to switch over to Linux. I have read that they rather people
use pirated versions of their software and hence maintain their domination
of the os market, than to let people use alternate software. In the end
you're still helping them maintain their domination and so you are doing
very little to hurt them. If you have morale dilemmers then perhaps you
wouldn't feel too bad about it knowing that you are likely helping them more
than hurting them. Perhaps it is for that reason that you should discontinue
using win98 .

Seriously, with their many billions of dollars, try not to lose too much sleep.