Are companies controlling their users?
I got into an interesting debate with a friend of mine -- the topic scoped out companies and their "quest" for user control.
The argument, or question, was should companies be allowed to control users by any means of limitation or closed-sourced programs?
A modern example I can give is Code Factory's new NVDA add-on, providing full functionality to the Eloquence and Vocalizer synthesizers. For $63.99, you are limited to three licenses/activations (one license per machine). The idea my friend had was that, though stipulated by the license agreement, you, as the user, should be able to essentialy have unlimited access to licenses because you bought the product.
Moreover, and generally speaking, she had also mentioned that if you owned a copy of a product (I.E.: Jaws, Microsoft Office, etc), you should be able to personally "manufacture a copy" (note that is in quotes). I'm not particularly sure what she means by " ;manufacture," since she isn't manufacturing anything, just copying the product itself on an individual basis, not as a company. Furthermore, she also believes that if she is able to "manufacture a copy," you should then be able to distribute it to other users.
Now, I explained that it is both illegal to "manufacture a copy," and also distribute it other non-licensed users. It is also illegal for said users to obtain said copy. This opens up a whole spectrum of arguments left and right of "should we have government intervention upon the tyranny of third-party program manufacturers, sellers, and distributers?" Should we as users control what these companies yearned to do? If we all just produced copies of licensed shareware that we then give to others to save their wallets, wouldn't that mean a decline in company sales and therefore, dare I even mention, no future updates to the products we both love and need? (That was more of a rhetorical question).
I take the stance that when you purchase a piece of software, you are legally obligated to fulfill the license agreement. These days (and even back before the wheel was invented), people spent all but no time reading through the license agreement upon purchasing and registering their software. In Freedom Scientific's OpenBook, I took a look at the license agreement out of curiosity. It stated, and I'm paraphrasing here, that you own the use of the program, not the program itself. The license key grants you access to use the program, not to own it.
Now, she thinks that you should be able to own it regardless of what the company believes. I'd like to equate this to the arrival of Europeans settlers in "the New World," or better yet, America. The native Americans felt that if white men desired to use their land, it was perfectly okay, but they could not claim it as their own. Out of pure greed and lust for dominating a land for their own, they "took" it because they could not stand by the promise that they could not have the shiny piece of paper that stated they took ownership of the land.
I know that's a little odd of a comparison, but it's the same concept -- I feel that if a company is competing in a capitalist economy, they have the right to implement criteria for the products they manufactuer (otherwise, they could take their kickball and go home).
What do you guys think? Am I being too hung-ho of living the American dream, or is my friend onto something that could revolutionize the way companies distribute their products?
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