----- Original Message ----- From: Curtis To: dragaera at dragaera.info Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005 9:42 PM Subject: OT: Weigh In (And thank God we have the promise of printed material to keep us entertained) But, should we allow, the people who have all the money, to tell us that we can't share or copy software, on the chance that someone else may profit from it? Please read the link before responding. In the face of waiting for Dzur, or Creotha, or whatever Steve comes up with, this may be the only worthwhile entertainment I have for a while. I realize, after proofreading, that I should not post whilst drunk. Wait, I'm always drunk when posting. Nevermind. -- Life, thy name is Irony ...Or, something like that. I am definately not the best person to answer this. You could loosely label me as a Rational Anarchist (read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Heinlein for the definetion), as such, I give only a passing regard to most laws. I feel that Napster, Grokster and the rest of the P2P sharing software are good for the consumer, and good for the industry. Why? Because it weeds out most of the garbage. If an artist only produces 1 or 2 decent songs, they will be downloaded, and no one will by the album. On the other hand, if they make a good album with good content, most people will by the CD anyway. This applies to movies as well. The record companies are actually selling MORE cd's this year than last year. Plus, who is making a profit? Yes, some of the P2P software costs money, but that is not directly affecting the record companies. So in short, I have no sympathy for the entertainment industry. The software industry is a different story. While I admit I have not paid for a Microsoft product in the last 15 years, I do pay for software that I use and think is worth the money. (I refuse to pay Bill Gates when he won't spend some of his billions to put out a decent product. Besides, he stole the original Windows code in the first place. MS DOS too.) Fortunately, in the software industry, there are people that produce shareware that works as well (or better) than a boxed up, store bought product, and they survive on donations or subscriptions after letting you test their product. I suppose what it comes down to is the governtment needs to butt out. The good products will survive, the bad fall to the wayside. It is not the governments job to ensure that a company makes money, it is the management of that company. (Pardon the ramble, it's been a long day. I will probably read this at work tomorrow and slap myself.) Jeff G.