>I previously purchased, from Apple for full price, Claris Emailer. When >it became corrupted, I had no moral qualms about downloading a >replacement from someone else. I suppose it was illegal, but what harm >was done, and to whom?
You are making the same mistake that most people make. You never bought a copy of the software, you bought a LICENSE to USE the software. That license just so happened to be bundled with a copy of the software (not all licenses are, most of my Windows NT Workstation licenses did NOT come with software, MS sells them cheaper if you buy them without the software. They expect you to do more installs off the same CDs you already own). When your copy of the software died, it is irrelivant how you got a new copy of the software. What matters is that you still have the license to use the software. So you broke no laws by downloading the software. >If John Ashcroft looks at his hard >drive and finds that he is still using it, I guess I could be in trouble. No, because John Ashcroft, as much as he might like, is NOT resposible for doing anything about pirated software. Copyright laws are NOT enforced by the government, or any law enforcement agency. They are enforced by the copyright holders. The FBI can't just decide you are pirating software and raid your house. They have to have a copyright holder come to them with evidence that you have software in violation of said copyright. Only then can they act on it and stop you. So Johnny boy can know about it all he wants. If Apple doesn't ask for it to be enforced, then it can't be. And Apple does not have a habit of enforcing the copyrights on EOL'd software (heck, they really don't have a habit of enforcing copyrights on most of their CURRENT software!). Also, with Copyrights, failure to enforce the copyright, can lead to it being unenforcable later. If the defendant can show that the copyright owner willfully ignored other violations, then it can cause the copyright to be lost and the item goes into public domain. This is why many companies DO go after little guys on occasion. Adobe doesn't care about joe schmoe stealing a copy of Photoshop. But they know joe schmoe can't afford to fight them, so will plead guilty and settle out of court. Each time someone does that, it re-enforces the copyright, so when Adobe hits the larger piracy rings, they have pleanty of cases to lean on to show that they have in fact actively been defending their copyright. Disney does the same thing. So does the RIAA. They didn't really care about 100 teenagers stealing music, what they cared about was getting 100 people to settle out and re-enforce the copyright so they could go after larger, richer, targets. (Also, in the case of the RIAA, they were trying to make case law to support that internet music swapping is in fact illegal and not covered under the same fair use laws that allow you to duplicate your friend's CD for your own use... and they wanted a VERY public, VERY mean, VERY parent scarey series of hits, so that parents would step in and stop their kids from downloading music... they were trying to raise awareness of the issue with the one group of people that could stop the teens from downloading music... their parents) -chris <http://www.mythtech.net> ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
