[LINK] Stolen or copied?

[Adam Todd]

At 07:49 PM 27/06/2007, Rick Welykochy wrote:
>Stewart Fist wrote:
>
>>  ... ten thousand times, and distributed these copies all over the world so
>>your code now has no commercial value.
>
>So, theft is theft, but copyright infringement is a matter of degree?

So to, degrees apply to:  Drink Driving, Murder, Manslaughter, Abuse 
of Process, Child Abuse, Aboriginal Child Abuse ... (ouch! I know 
it's 1810 again, they say history repeats itself, but I didn't expect 
it to come back so fast and to think the last Aboriginal Child known 
to have been taken from his family was 1998!)

>Regarding code having no commercial value, I cannot recall hearing about
>a software product that became valueless because of copyright infringement.
>Or a company going under because of it.

No, in fact most tend to do better because of it.  There is nothing 
worse than a pirated copy of software and then a system upgrade 
:)  You need that software and most people buy it on the second occasion.

I have notices that "older" software is becoming less and less likely 
to run on newer Windows OS.  Is this a built in way to force people to upgrade?

>What about reported losses due to software "piracy"?

How can you report a loss due to software piracy if you haven't 
audited the exact number of pirated copies!

>IIRC, the recording industry in the USA reported staggering figures of
>0.1% of units are illegal copies.

More like 11%!!