1921 lines
93 KiB
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1921 lines
93 KiB
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*******************************************************
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** _______ ____ **
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** IIIII I IIIII IIIII I I **
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** I II I I II I I I I____ **
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** III I III IIIII I I **
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** I I I I I I I I **
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** I I I I I I I I____ **
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**keepin' the dream alive **
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*******************************************************
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-=> VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1, June, 1989 <=-
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**** WELCOME ****
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To the first issue of -=* PIRATE *=-!
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Special thanks for getting this issue out go to:
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Jedi
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Spanky
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Jim Richards
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Hatchet Molly
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Chris Robin
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Maxx Cougar
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Taran King
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Knight Lightning
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Flint
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The Man
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Any comments, or if you want to contribute, most of us can
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be reached at one of the following boards:
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GREAT ESCAPE (312) 535-2761 >>> PIRATE HOME BOARD
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SYCAMORE ELITE (815) 895-5733
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THE UNDERGROUND (201) 957-1976
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PACIFIC ALLIANCE (818) 280-5710
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BITNET ADDRESS (Chris Robin): TK0EEE1@NIU.BITNET
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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Our goal is to share knowledge, gossip, information, and tips
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for warez hobbyists.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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*. What's a Pirate?
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*. Pirate Do's and Don'ts
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*. Pirate tips
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*. Why Software ownership is bad for society
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*. Copyright Law
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*. Computer laws in Wisconsin
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*. Editorial: Big Brother in the Computer Room?
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*. Sysop's corner
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*. What's hot, what's not
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*. Wants and Needs
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*. Board Review of the Month: THE GREAT ESCAPE
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*. A few decent boards
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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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* * * * SO YOU WANT TO BE A PIRATE? * * * *
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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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What's a pirate? COMPUTER PIRACY is copying and
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distribution of copyright software (warez). Pirates are
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hobbyists who enjoy collecting and playing with the latest
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programs. Most pirates enjoy collecting warez, getting them
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running, and then generally archive them, or store them away. A
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PIRATE IS NOT A BOOTLEGGER. Bootleggers are to piracy what a
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chop-shop is to a home auto mechanic. Bootleggers are people who
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DEAL stolen merchandise for personal gain. Bootleggers are
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crooks. They sell stolen goods. Pirates are not crooks, and
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most pirates consider bootleggers to be lower life forms than
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child molesters.
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Pirates SHARE warez to learn, trade information, and have fun!
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But, being a pirate is more than swapping warez. It's a life
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style and a passion. The office worker or class mate who brings
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in a disk with a few files is not necessarily a pirate any more
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than a friend laying a copy of the lastest Depeche Mode album on
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you is a pirate. The *TRUE* pirate is plugged into a larger
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group of people who share similar interests in warez. This is
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usually done through Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs), and the
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rule of thumb is "you gotta give a little to get a little...ya
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gets back what ya gives." Pirates are NOT freeloaders, and only
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lamerz think they get something for nothing.
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A recent estimate in the Chicago Tribune (March 25, p. VII: 4)
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indicated that computer manufacturers estimate the cost of
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computer piracy at over $4 billion annually. This is absurd, of
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course. Businesses rarely pirate warez, because the penalties for
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discovery do not make it cost effective. Individuals who pirate
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are rarely going to spend several thousand dollars a year for
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warez they generally have little practical use for, and there's a
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lot of evidence that pirates spend more money on warez they
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probably don't need. In fact, pirates may be one of the best
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forms of advertising for quality products, because sharing allows
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a shop-around method for buying warez. Most of us buy a program
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for the documents and the support, but why invest in four or five
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similar programs if we aren't sure which best suits our needs?
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Nah, pirates aren't freeloaders.
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Is piracy unethical? It may be illegal, although most states have
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laws providing a grey area between archiving (storing) and use.
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But, is it UNETHICAL? We think not. We challenge the claim that
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pirates cost software manufactures any lost revenue, and will
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argue that they spread the word for high quality products. The
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average person cannot afford the mega-bucks needed to buy Dbase-4
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and Foxbase, and would do without either if forced to buy. But,
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by testing out both, we are able to inform those who WILL buy
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which is better. So, we spread computer literacy, indirectly
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encourage improvements, and keep the market alive. Pirates hurt
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no one, take money from nobody's pocket, and contribute far more
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to the computer industry than they are willing to acknowledge.
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How many of us have had mega-fone bills in a month? The
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tele-comm folks must love pirates. No, pirates aren't cheap
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skates. The fun of finding an obscure program for somebody, the
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thrill of cracking a program, the race to see who can be the
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first to upload the latest version--these are the lure of piracy.
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We are collections of information. Unlike those who would keep
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computer literacy to the affluent few, we make it more readily
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available to the masses.
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So what's a pirate? A pirate is somebody who believes that
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information belongs to the people. Just as a book can be zeroxed
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or placed in a library to be shared, pirates provide a type of
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library service. The experienced pirate even acts as a tutor in
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helping those who may have purchased warez. We don't bitch about
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serving as unpaid consultants to the computer industry, and we
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don't wouldn't think to request payment for our services. By
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providing a user-friendly network of information sharers, we
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increase computer literacy which is in everybody's mutual
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interests.
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The software industry is unlikely to acknowledge (or even
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recognize) the contributions of pirates to their enterprise, and
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continue to view us as "the enemy!" Pirates are not represented
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in legislation and have no strong constituency to challenge
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misrepresentation. PIRATE NEWSLETTER is intended to break down
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the power of media to define us as crooks and outcasts and bring
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us together. By keeping information open and flowing and not
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under the control of a privileged few, we are enhancing democracy
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and freedom of the market place.
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PIRATES ARE FREEDOM FIGHTERS KEEPNG THE DREAM ALIVE!
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>> *END* <<
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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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* * * * PIRATE DOs AND DON'Ts * * **
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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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If you want to get on an elite board and stay there, there's
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some things you should do, and some things that are taboo.
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Here's a partial list:
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-----
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DO:
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-----
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1. DO make copies from original disks, and be sure to put the
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version of the product in the description.
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2. DO put "read me" tips in the first disk if there's a trick
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to getting a program working.
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3. DO put up complete files, NOT partial files, and label
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them as they are on the disk.
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4. DO put in the file description whether the program is
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cracked or uncracked
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5. DO read the message section of the boards, and contribute
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when you can. Don't be afraid to ask dumb questions.
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6. DO make sure you have sufficient space on your hard drive
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or disks when downloading a large file.
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This may sound silly, but it's not unusual especially for
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novices to forget space and botch a download.
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7. DO make sure to describe whether a program you uploaded
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has special requirements (mouse, math co-processor).
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8. DO keep up on protocols...use the fastest available.
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Using Xmodem is a sure sign of a lamer.
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9. DO read the bulletins and check to be sure the board
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doesn't already have a copy of what you are uploading.
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10. DO use zip comments to specify what a disk is.
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----------------
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------
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DONT:
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-----
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1. DON'T whine and swear at the sysop. You get on a board
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and get more access as you prove yourself deserving.
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2. DON'T upload .gif files and other programs that are a
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dime a dozen and of little use. Upload what you would like
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to receive.
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3. DON'T start changing handles for every board. Most BBSers
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are known by one handle, and change only if there is a good
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reason to.
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4. DON'T phreak to a pirate board. It draws attention to the
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board and makes life miserable for everybody.
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5. DON'T logoff prematurely. Use the board's logoff command.
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6. DON'T change the names of a file just to get upload credit.
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This is a sure way to get kicked off any board.
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7. DON'T start flaming other users. Pirate boards are SHARE
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boards, and most users would rather read some good tips
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and not engage in petty arguments.
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8. DON'T upload faulty files or incomplete files. Be sure
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it's all there. If it isn't, at least indicate that in the
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file description.
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9. DON'T blame the sysop for faulty files until you have
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at least tried leaving messages for help.
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10. DON'T log on just to look around...upload or post something.
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If you don't SHARE, you're taking time away from other
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users.
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>> *END* <<
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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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* * * * PIRATE TIPS * * * *
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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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------------
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DOCUMENTS:
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------------
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Some programs require dox for full use their capabilities.
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There are document files for some programs floating around,
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and if you have any, upload and spread them to your favorite
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boards or use e-mail (bitnet) to get them to friends.
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QUE publishes a variety of texts that in most cases are more
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helpful than the original documentation. These include tips on
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most LOTUS program, dBase-4, Rbase, Q&A, Excell, Wordperfect,
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Word Star, Paradox, DisplayWrite, Microsoft Word, SuperCalc,
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PageMaker, and many, many more. Most large bookstores carry these
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(or will order them), or you can call QUE's order line at
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1-800-428-5331.
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------------------
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UPLOADING FILES:
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------------------
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One of the biggest hassles is downloading a file only to find
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that it doesn't work or that not all files are included. When
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you upload a program, BE SURE TO use a diskcopy command that
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copies the ENTIRE program, including subdir, label each disk (or
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file) as it appears on the original. If a program is snatched or
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if there are any problems, you should specify when uploading. USE
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THE ZIP COMMENT (pkzip -z /filename) command to label each file.
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So, if you upload a 5 disk set, and if the first disk from the
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original files is the program files, be sure this is the first
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disk you zip and upload. Label it something like MYFILE-1 and in
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the zip command label it as it is labeled on the original.
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NEVER(!!) install a program, especially a large on such as ALDUS,
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and then just zip up the directory into a single multi-meg file
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for uploading. REMEMBER: Not all users can handle files over
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360 K, so keep files to a manageable size!
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-----------------
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UNWORKABLE FILES
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-----------------
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What do you do if you get a program that doesn't work? Check
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back with the sysop of the board where you obtained it.
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Most sysops appreciate being told of problems---if you have
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a problem, somebody else will likely have the same problem, and
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it doesn't do the sysop a favor to keep silent. Sometimes it's
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just a matter of finding the right trick, but if it's a bad
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program, it should be taken off the board ASAP! But don't bitch
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at the sysop--Nothing's worse than a whiney user. If you
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find there's a trick to getting a program working, leave a
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message on the board. Remember the motto: ONE FOR ALL, and all
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that, and SHARING is the pirate credo!!
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>> *END* <<
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(The following is reprinted from BITNET unedited ((eds.)).
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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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* * * Why Software Ownership is bad for Society * * *
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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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Talk given by Richard Stallman at Univ. of Texas, Feb. 1987.
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Square brackets contain comments and clarifications that were not
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said in the original talk.
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Copyright @copyright%% 1987, Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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This is an unedited transcript of an informal talk. Verbatim
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copying and redistribution is permitted; alteration is not.
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If you are interested in helping to edit this to be more suitable
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for publication, please contact the Free Software Foundation:
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675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139; or send email to
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gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu.
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The field of software is a fairly new one. About twenty years
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ago, people started doing lots of programming. There was no
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clear basis in tradition for whether software should be
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considered property or not. There were several possible
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traditions you could consider extending by analogy to the area of
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software, no one of which was inevitable, or necessarily more
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right than the others. One of them was the area of mathematics.
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Some people believe that a program is like a mathematical
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formula, and the tradition for mathematical formulas is that they
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couldn't be property. Another thing that programs are like is
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recipes. In fact, of all the things that people encounter in
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daily life, the recipe is the one that's most like a program.
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It's directions for getting something useful done. And recipes,
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also, by our traditions cannot be property. There was a third
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thing, and that was literature. As it happens, literature
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traditionally @emph%could% be property. Programs have something
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in common with all three of these things. They don't have more,
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particularly, in common with literature than they do with
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mathematics or recipes, but the decision was made to treat them
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like literature because the people who had the most to gain from
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that particular decision were allowed to decide.
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But this decision was not good for society as a whole. It's
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incredibly destructive, and it feeds an overall destructive
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tendency in this society which we can see in every area. And
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that's why, having observed the results, I came to the conclusion
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that it was unacceptable, that software @emph%cannot% be
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property, and that I would dedicate my career to bringing that
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about.
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If we look at the traditional forms of intellectual property, we
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can see they were all designed to fit into niches where they
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could exist without doing great harm to society. These niches
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were often created by the technology that existed at the time.
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For example, consider the area of books, for which copyright was
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invented. At the time, books could only be copied by mass
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production. Earlier, books were copied one at a time, by hand,
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and at that time there was no idea of copyright. In fact, people
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didn't even have the @emph%concept% of strictly distinguishing
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their original book from a non-original one. It was a continuum.
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They recognized that some writers wrote more new things into
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their books, while they copied passages [from other books], or
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they might just be copying entire books. All of these things
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were legitimate, useful activities, though useful in different
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ways. But when the printing press was invented, it suddenly
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became for all intents and purposes impossible to copy a book by
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hand. Not that it was any harder than it had been before, but by
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comparison with making a copy on a printing press, it was so
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ridiculously impractical that no one would want to do it. The
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situation where books were made by mass production lent itself to
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copyright in the sense that copyright became a restriction on one
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particular kind of industry---a form of industrial regulation.
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It didn't take away the rights of the reading public in any way,
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because members of the reading public couldn't copy books anyway.
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They didn't own printing presses, so it was effectively
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impossible for them to copy books. But this niche was created by
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a particular technology, and changing technology can make it go
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away again. The technology of computer programs has never been
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like that.
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[I have since learned that people did copy books by hand to a
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significant extent after the printing press was developed. What
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I said was true in recent times, but in England in the 1500's
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(and perhaps later) government-enforced featherbedding among
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printers made printed books fairly expensive; as a result, poor
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people might more easily afford the time to copy a book than the
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price of the book. But these people were not prosecuted for
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copying or told it was wrong. Copyright was applied only to
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authors and publishers. It was treated as an industrial
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regulation.]
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If we look, for example, at patents, we find something that was
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specifically set up to benefit the @emph%public%, not the
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inventor. It was set up to encourage inventors to disclose what
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they had invented, and to give them monopolies that were limited
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in time, to a time that short compared to the useful life of any
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invention then. It's no longer short, compared to the useful
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life of any invention today. In fact, core memory was already
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pretty much obsolete when its patent ran out. That's a very
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famous patent, and I suspect that a lot of other patents have the
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same results. But remember, the purpose of setting up patents
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was to benefit mainly society as a whole, by encouraging
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disclosure and thus making it possible for people to build on
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each others' work. You won't find a motive like that among
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people who advocate intellectual property today.
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In the time that I've worked as a programmer, I've watched things
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change from a situation where people generally shared work and
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generally used work that had been done in whatever way was
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useful, to one in which is nearly impossible to utilize work that
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other people have done, where people feel uncomfortably cynical.
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Constantly, a person will describe a great piece he's doing
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that's so exciting, you ask him %%will I be able to use it?'',
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and his face falls, and he says, no, you probably won't be, and
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he realizes that he's doing something wrong, but he perhaps
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doesn't have the commitment to doing right that would be required
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to decide that he wasn't going to do it any more. But that kind
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of thing [doing what they know is wrong and being too scared to
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stop] demoralizes people.
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If we look at the two arguments that are advanced most often
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toward intellectual property in software, they are one, the
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emotional argument, and two, the economic argument. The
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emotional argument goes something like %%I put my sweat, and my
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heart, into this program. It's my soul; it comes from @emph%me%,
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it's @emph%mine!%.'' Well, it's sort of fishy that most of these
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people would then go sell it to a company. And what ever
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happened to egoless programming, anyway? So I don't really think
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that that argument is worth refuting any harder than that. It's
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a feeling that people can cultivate when it suits them, not one
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that is inevitable. By comparison, consider all the great
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artists and artisans of medieval times, who usually didn't even
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sign their names. They didn't consider that it was relevant who
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had done the work, only that it existed; and this was the way
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people thought for hundreds of years.
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The economic argument goes something like, %%I want to get rich
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(except that I'll call that %make a living'), and if you don't
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allow me to get rich by programming, then I won't program. And
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then you'll be screwed---so there!'' Well, I'll explain later
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why I think we don't have to go along with that kind of
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blackmail. But first I want to address the claim [I should have
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said, the implicit assumption] that society actually benefits
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from proprietary software development.
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The first problem with that argument is that it's comparing the
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wrong two things [owned software vs no software]. Certainly,
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software development is useful. But to link the development of
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the software with subsequent ownership and prevention of use is
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to beg the question. The question is, %%Should software
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development be linked with some ability to stop people from using
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it?'', and in order to decide this, we have to judge the effects
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of each of those two activities independently. What I intend to
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show is that the effects of @emph%ownership%, by itself, are very
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destructive, and therefore, if you want to encourage the
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development which is useful, we should not connect it with
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something destructive [like ownership]. And I'll go on to
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explain other ways in which this [encouragement] can easily be
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done.
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Let's look at the overall effects of software ownership.
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Consider that we have a program that has been developed, and now
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it either can be free, or it can be proprietary. There are three
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different levels of material harm that come from making it
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proprietary. And with each of these, there's a concomitant form
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of spiritual harm. By %%spiritual'' I mean the effect on
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people's feelings, attitudes, and thoughts of the actions that
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they take. These changes in people's ways of thinking will then
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have a further effect on their actions in the future.
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The first level is the level of simple use of a program. If a
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program is successfully made proprietary, that will cause fewer
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people to use it. This doesn't make it any less work, however.
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Here is a crucial difference between programs and cars, chairs,
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or sandwiches. That is, once there's one of them, @emph%anyone%
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can essentially snap his fingers and have as many more copies of
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the thing as are wanted. This isn't true for material objects,
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which are conserved, and which have to be built in the same way
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that the first one was built. With material objects, it's not
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necessarily destructive to have a price on them because that
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|
means if people decide to buy fewer of them, you can @emph%make%
|
|
fewer of them and use fewer resources and spend less of your
|
|
time. You might say, %%Well, these people only want to pay for
|
|
ten of these, so I'll build ten and I'll spend the rest of the
|
|
day going fishing.'' But that's not relevant when the question
|
|
is whether @emph%they% should build some more @emph%themselves%,
|
|
which is what users will do with free programs. So we find that
|
|
there's no overall benefit which comes---no non-selfish,
|
|
non-obstructive reason to want to put a price on the use---why
|
|
have a disincentive to use something which really costs nothing
|
|
to make? A great spiritual harm goes along with this waste,
|
|
because of the way it's worked.
|
|
|
|
The spiritual harm comes from the nondisclosure agreements and
|
|
licenses that people sign, because each buyer is asked to betray
|
|
his neighbors. If you want to use a program and your neighbor
|
|
wants to use the program, the Golden Rule says that you should
|
|
want @emph%both% of you to get that program. You shouldn't aim
|
|
for a solution where you get it and the other people don't, if
|
|
you want to be a good citizen, that is. And the nondisclosure
|
|
agreement essentially says %%I promise to be a bad citizen---I
|
|
promise to say %To hell with my neighbors!' To hell with
|
|
everyone! Just give @emph%me% a copy!''. And you can see the
|
|
spiritual effect that has on the community you live in.
|
|
|
|
A lot of people unconsciously recognize this and that's why the
|
|
decide to share programs anyway. But they feel somewhat guilty
|
|
because they haven't reasoned it out carefully and decided that
|
|
the nondisclosure agreements are illegitimate morally. They know
|
|
that they must break those agreements in order to be still
|
|
friends with their friends, but they still think that the
|
|
agreements are valid also, and so they feel @emph%ashamed% of
|
|
being friends with their friends. And that's also a kind of
|
|
spiritual harm. I say that people shouldn't @emph%have% to
|
|
explain in a slightly embarrassed tone of voice that they're
|
|
%%pirates''. They shouldn't @emph%think% of themselves as
|
|
pirates. They shouldn't use that particular propoganda term.
|
|
|
|
The second level of material harm is at the level of
|
|
@emph%adapting% programs. Most commercially available software
|
|
isn't fully available, even commercially. It's available for you
|
|
to take it or leave it, but it's not available for you to change.
|
|
But changing programs is an incredibly useful thing, and if that
|
|
is prevented, it's a great harm. I have a friend who told me
|
|
that she worked as a programmer in a bank for about six months,
|
|
writing a program that was pretty close to something that was
|
|
commercially available, and she thought that if she could have
|
|
gotten source code for that commercially available program, it
|
|
would have taken much less than six months to adapt it to their
|
|
needs. But they couldn't get the source code, so she had to do a
|
|
lot of make-work, a lot of work that you would include in the GNP
|
|
but was really totally useless. And I'm sure you've all had the
|
|
experience as programmers of being frustrated because there was a
|
|
program you wanted to change and couldn't.
|
|
|
|
We can consider what it would be like if recipes were hoarded in
|
|
the same fashion as software. You'd say, %%How do I change this
|
|
recipe to put in less salt?'', and the great chef says, %%How
|
|
dare you insult my recipe, the child of my brain, by trying to
|
|
tamper with it? You don't have the judgement to tamper with my
|
|
recipe and make it work right!''. %%But my doctor says I'm not
|
|
supposed to eat salt! What do I do?''.
|
|
|
|
The spiritual harm that comes from this is to the spirit of
|
|
self-reliance, which used to be greatly valued in this country.
|
|
If you can't be self-reliant, then the landscape that you live in
|
|
is frozen under someone else's control and you can't change it.
|
|
That leads to a demoralized attitude like %%Well, yeah, this
|
|
system isn't really what we want, but it's hopeless to think of
|
|
trying to change it, so we'll just have to live with it and
|
|
suffer and suffer and suffer.'' And nothing can kill morale of
|
|
programmers like that.
|
|
|
|
I remember even at MIT we had an example like that, and I
|
|
remember how it demoralized people. Our first graphics printer
|
|
was the XGP, which many of you are probably lucky enough not to
|
|
have heard of. But that was available ten years ago or more.
|
|
And all the software for that was written at MIT, and we could
|
|
change it. We put in lots of nice features, such as it would
|
|
send you a message when your document had actually been printed;
|
|
and it would a send you a message if you had anything queued and
|
|
there was a paper jam; and many other nice features. Then later
|
|
we got something called the Dover, which was another gift from
|
|
Xerox. But there, the software was proprietary, and it ran in a
|
|
separate computer that served as the spooler, and we couldn't add
|
|
any of those features. So when you got a message that said
|
|
%%your document has been sent'', you don't know if it's been
|
|
printed, you won't find out when it's been printed, and no one
|
|
would get informed when there was a paper jam, so it might sit
|
|
there with no one fixing it for an hour. And we all knew that we
|
|
were capable of fixing these things, probably as well as the
|
|
original authors were, but somebody found it useful to sabotage
|
|
us. That was a constant source of frustration.
|
|
|
|
The third level of material harm is the level of software
|
|
development. Software development used to go on by a sort of
|
|
evolutionary process, where a person would take a program and
|
|
rewrite parts of it for one new feature, and then another person
|
|
would rewrite parts to put another new feature in; this could go
|
|
on over twenty years. The final program might have many features
|
|
that the original one didn't have, but you might still see a few
|
|
lines of code that you could recognize by their style as having
|
|
been there from ten years before without ever being changed. And
|
|
one of the main goals of intellectual property is to prevent this
|
|
kind of evolution, to try to make it impossible for you to throw
|
|
together a program quickly and easily by cannibalizing things
|
|
that are already written. In any kind of intellectual field,
|
|
progress is built by standing on the shoulders of others. That's
|
|
what's no longer allowed---you can only stand on the shoulders of
|
|
the other people in @emph%your company% nowadays.
|
|
|
|
And the spirit that's harmed by this material harm is the spirit
|
|
of scientific cooperation, which used to be so strong that
|
|
scientists would cooperate with each other even when they were in
|
|
countries that were at war. Nationalism wasn't able to destroy
|
|
scientific cooperation, but greed has. Nowadays, people don't
|
|
publish enough in their papers to be able to replicate anything.
|
|
They publish only enough for you to be able to gaze in amazement
|
|
at how much they had been able to do.
|
|
|
|
[Tape counter 213-227: someone describes the example of
|
|
Karmarkar's algorithm, an efficient algorithm for linear
|
|
programming that AT&T is keeping secret.]
|
|
|
|
So now that I have shown all these reasons why ownership of
|
|
software is bad for society, I think the conclusion that we
|
|
shouldn't allow or recognize in any way a concept such as
|
|
ownership of programs. We should say that programs are
|
|
@emph%not% property, and if we want to encourage software
|
|
development, we should encourage it in another way.
|
|
|
|
There are many fields in which no one sees a way to get rich by
|
|
owning something and no one expects to, but there are still lots
|
|
of people eager to work in the field. They compete bitterly,
|
|
though more sadly than bitterly, I guess, for the few funded
|
|
positions available, none of which is funded very much.
|
|
|
|
Suddenly, however, when it becomes possible by hoarding
|
|
information to get rich, you find people saying that no one will
|
|
work in the field if they can't get rich. Well, it may be true
|
|
at that moment, but it's a consequence of the expectation that
|
|
you @emph%can% get rich. Therefore, we shouldn't assume that it
|
|
has to be true in any particular field. It's essentially a
|
|
coincidence that that field makes it possible to get rich by
|
|
hoarding, and if we were to take away the possibility of getting
|
|
rich by hoarding, then after a while, when the people had
|
|
intellectually readjusted, they would once again be eager to work
|
|
in the field for the joy of working in it, and they would ask us
|
|
only to provide them a pittance to live on. And these pittances
|
|
can be provided at universities which right now are proprietary
|
|
software sellers. They can be supported by hardware
|
|
manufacturers which have to do software development anyway, and
|
|
twenty years ago did free software development. They can be
|
|
supported by government contracts and grants, which actually
|
|
support a lot of proprietary software development today. A large
|
|
amount of software development is supported one way or another by
|
|
the military, some of which may have to do with building weapons,
|
|
but not all of it; but it's proprietary anyway, most of the time.
|
|
|
|
Some people I know right now have a contract to write a
|
|
proprietary, improved version of a free program that supports
|
|
TCP/IP on IBM PC's. And with this contract, they could make a
|
|
living just as well writing free software, but of course they're
|
|
not going to; they want to be able to clean up afterwards. And
|
|
you all know of people who get research grants to develop
|
|
something at a university, and then they make the unfinished
|
|
version free, and go on to start companies to sell something with
|
|
the last few finishing touches, so that you'd actually want to
|
|
use it.
|
|
|
|
Our whole world, everywhere we look, all forms of good will to
|
|
your neighbor are being undermined by the search for ways to
|
|
obstruct for profit. Fifty years ago, various people in the
|
|
Mafia would go around to stores in the neighborhood and say %%You
|
|
have a nice building there; it would be a shame, wouldn't it, if
|
|
it burned down, and there have been a lot of fires around here
|
|
lately. I think you need some protection''. And this was called
|
|
the %%protection racket''. Now we have people going to computer
|
|
users and saying, %%You've got some nice software there, but I
|
|
paid those congressmen to say it's illegal for you to have it. A
|
|
lot of people have been going to jail around here lately for
|
|
that. You wouldn't want to go to jail, would you? I think you
|
|
need to pay me some money.'' And this is the software protection
|
|
racket.
|
|
|
|
They say that they're providing a useful service to the public,
|
|
that they are software publishers, or software stores. But these
|
|
functions only appear to be necessary because of the restrictions
|
|
they have managed to place on us. You wouldn't need a software
|
|
store if software were free. You'd only need the public library,
|
|
which would have a computer with copies that you could download,
|
|
or copy onto floppies or tapes, of one copy of all the programs
|
|
that you'd want. And it wouldn't cost very much---nothing,
|
|
compared with what software stores cost to run, to make this
|
|
thing go.
|
|
|
|
But the people in the Mafia fifty years ago didn't want to admit
|
|
to themselves---they wanted to pretend to themselves that there
|
|
was something legitimate about what they were doing, and that's
|
|
why they phrased it in terms of protection. They didn't bluntly
|
|
say %%I'll burn your store down if you don't pay me.'' So, too,
|
|
the software publishers like to pretend, and speak as if they
|
|
were doing something useful, instead of simply saying %%if you
|
|
use that program, I'll send some cops after you if you don't pay
|
|
me.''
|
|
|
|
[Unintelligible question, apparently about if there are
|
|
sufficient programmers to write software w/o monopolies.
|
|
Ans:]
|
|
|
|
Well how do you know they're not sufficient? So much of software
|
|
work today is wasted by duplication that's done only for
|
|
proprietary reasons, we could probably get as much software
|
|
delivered with half the programmers if we didn't have this form
|
|
of featherbedding. In fact, it's sort of funny to look at the
|
|
quest for software productivity. There are two meanings you
|
|
could have for software productivity. You can look at the
|
|
software productivity of the industry as a whole, or you could
|
|
ask about the productivity of a particular company. There's a
|
|
lot of work being put into increasing the software productivity
|
|
of particular companies one by one, but the best way to increase
|
|
the productivity of the whole industry is to eliminate the
|
|
artificial obstruction. And that would increase productivity far
|
|
more than anything people are trying to do now. But they don't
|
|
want that, because what they want is productivity of my company,
|
|
not productivity that actually benefits society. But they use
|
|
that language to try make people overlook the difference.
|
|
|
|
It's an interesting thing about how language is used for
|
|
propoganda. By choosing particular words, you don't @emph%force%
|
|
people to think a certain way, but you can strongly suggest
|
|
certain avenues of thought. By using a certain word for two
|
|
things, you can bias people without their knowing it towards
|
|
seeing the similarities and underestimating the differences. And
|
|
this is one of the reasons why software hoarders use the terms
|
|
%%property rights'' and %%ownership'' and %%theft'' while I use
|
|
the term %%software hoarding''. Software hoarding is my name for
|
|
the crime of trying to prevent someone else from sharing a
|
|
program with a third party. And that's the same thing that's
|
|
going on with "software productivity". Software productivity has
|
|
two meanings, about which you would say different things, but it
|
|
takes a critical eye to realize that there are two meanings. If
|
|
you don't look critically, you might say %%Ah! Improving
|
|
productivity---that's got to be what we need! Obviously, what we
|
|
want to do to make society work better is improve
|
|
productivity!''. You wouldn't guess that they're talking about a
|
|
very narrow kind of productivity, and excluding something that
|
|
comes into the overall productivity, an area where they
|
|
themselves are deliberately making things worse.
|
|
|
|
What can we say, I guess, about the overall effect of technology
|
|
on these kinds of restrictions? I've explained how copyright
|
|
pretty much made sense. It was only a small restriction on
|
|
people's freedom in the technological situation in which it was
|
|
invented. But now we've seen a change in technology which makes
|
|
copying things one at a time a feasible way to copy, and anyone
|
|
can do it as well as anyone else, which changes the fundamental
|
|
situation that made copyright legitimate and caused it to become
|
|
illegitimate. Right now we've seen half of that transformation
|
|
in the copying of books. You can xerox a book now, but only for
|
|
very expensive books would you want to, because what you get is
|
|
not as nice as a bound book, and it takes you more work to do it.
|
|
|
|
It fundamentally does cost more (now) to make a book by xeroxing
|
|
than it does on a printing press. And it costs the individual
|
|
more, so we've only seen a few situations in which people wanted
|
|
to make any number of copies of a book by xeroxing. But that's
|
|
just a transient state, because soon we're going to have
|
|
wonderful computer printers, and we're going to have
|
|
digitizers---scanners, and it will be possible to scan any book
|
|
quickly, you'll have a robot to turn the pages, and have it on
|
|
your disk, and send it across a network to be printed out into a
|
|
beautifully bound copy, and at that time, book publishers will be
|
|
just as useless to society as software publishers are. And at
|
|
that time, the move that's already afoot to eliminate the public
|
|
libraries or tax them with royalties, may essentially complete
|
|
itself. You may be unable to get a copy of a book without
|
|
signing a license of some sort.
|
|
|
|
In general, the entire thrust of information technology is that
|
|
information is completely interconvertible. Any form can be
|
|
changed into any form. Nothing is ever lost. And also, the
|
|
whole idea of the computer is that it's a universal machine.
|
|
It's a machine that can be programmed to simulate any other
|
|
machine. Why is this better than building a specific machine?
|
|
It's because you can change the program, because you can copy the
|
|
program, load in new programs. The ability to copy and the
|
|
ability to change a program are the entire basis for the
|
|
usefulness of the computer. And those are precisely what the
|
|
software owners don't want the public to be able to do. Software
|
|
owners want to reserve all the benefits of computer technology to
|
|
themselves, with only a %%trickle down'' to the public. I say
|
|
the public should not allow this. If we call the bluff of the
|
|
programmers or the programming investors, they won't have as many
|
|
Porsches and they won't eat as much sushi. But once they are
|
|
willing to go along with that, they'll find that there are other
|
|
ways of organizing businesses that are less profitable, but
|
|
enough for a good number of programmers to make a living
|
|
nonetheless. And we'll take a great step forward toward a world
|
|
in which it's much @emph%easier% to make a living, because there
|
|
won't be as obstruction going on, making us do unnecessary work.
|
|
And we'll see all sorts of indirect effects, because society is
|
|
pretty well linked.
|
|
|
|
Software hoarding is one form that the tendency to obstruct
|
|
society for profit takes; one that pertains to our field, but
|
|
that actually exists in some other fields as well, to greater or
|
|
lesser extents. And the more people see this going on, the more
|
|
are going to be inclined to do so themselves when @emph%they% get
|
|
a chance, and the more they're going to be demoralized and
|
|
willing to put up with it, and not fight against it when they
|
|
encounter it in others. But conversely, any time we take a stand
|
|
against some of ownership because it makes the whole world
|
|
poorer, we'll help other people stand up in the future, and we'll
|
|
help spread the idea that you should ask not what your country
|
|
can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
|
|
|
|
[QUESTIONS]
|
|
|
|
Q: Your talk is very impressive, it's almost like a sermon...
|
|
RMS: Yes, it is. Q: and it's difficult to put all the pieces
|
|
together and argue with it, but I find it especially difficult to
|
|
see how your alternative system would work, or even exactly how
|
|
you imagine it to function. Let me you this: you didn't mention
|
|
music. You mentioned recipes and other things. RMS: yes. Q:
|
|
But music is an interesting analog also, with the score; because
|
|
the composers have a union, and everything, and they not only---
|
|
|
|
RMS: It supports them very poorly. Copyright as a way to support
|
|
composers or musicians is a @emph%flop%. We should throw it away
|
|
and get something new. We're the only advanced country that
|
|
still relies on that.
|
|
|
|
Q: Well, the question I wanted to ask you---I realize it doesn't
|
|
work very well, but they hope that they can get some profit from
|
|
the publication of the printed score, but also if a producer of
|
|
say, a Broadway show, or a movie maker, makes a big profit by
|
|
@emph%performing% the composer's work, then the composer would
|
|
like to have a piece of that action too. And you can make an
|
|
analogy between that and a user of software.
|
|
|
|
RMS: You can, and I think in both cases you get problems further
|
|
down the line. See, the nature of knowledge, and information in
|
|
general, is to make use of it, you transform it, and mix it in
|
|
with other things. And to try to keep track of how much of a big
|
|
program was developed by this author, and how much by this person
|
|
and so on, it fundamentally can't be done unless you forbid them
|
|
to work together, which is what the current system effectively
|
|
does. It's perfectly possible to keep straight which company
|
|
developed something when nothing can ever go from one company to
|
|
another. And that's a tremendous harm.
|
|
|
|
The whole idea of encouraging the development of information
|
|
seems plausible because the information is useful. But in order
|
|
for it to be fully useful, you have to abandon the idea of
|
|
trying to keep track of who created it, because any component
|
|
could be created in many stages.
|
|
|
|
Now it's true it doesn't do very much harm to anyone if this
|
|
Broadway producer pays some money to the composer, assuming that
|
|
there was only one composer (of course, there's such a thing as
|
|
the folk process, and there's the process of arrangement as
|
|
well), but it just happened, I guess, that in music there
|
|
wouldn't normally be so many stages of transformation of one work
|
|
that it was hard to keep track of. And part of the reason is
|
|
that fundamentally, the value of music is aesthetic, and
|
|
therefore originality wasn't imposed simply for the sake of
|
|
intellectual property, it was valued for its own sake because
|
|
something that was not new was not aesthetically up to
|
|
contribution. A piece that was made by cannibalizing parts of a
|
|
few other pieces with a little bit that was new wouldn't turn
|
|
music listeners on very much; they'd just say %%oh, yeah! Well,
|
|
I remember that, I've heard that before in so-and-so's work.''
|
|
And in an area where originality has an intrinsic usefulness, you
|
|
won't get things being tacked on by one person, and another, and
|
|
gradually changed around so much, although in some areas of music
|
|
you do---in folk music, that's what happens [originality is not
|
|
the main concern in folk music]. And when there are fewer people
|
|
changing a work, it becomes less of an odious burden to try to
|
|
keep track of who did it, and if you're talking about in
|
|
particular, the Broadway producer, well, he's running a big
|
|
business anyway, and he can arrange to make a license and so on,
|
|
so in that situation it doesn't do very much harm.
|
|
|
|
There's a danger when somebody says that something is wrong with
|
|
a significant part of society---there's a certain problem that
|
|
you run into, which is that on one side, there are people who
|
|
call you a fanatic, and on the other side there are people who
|
|
call you inconsistent. If you look for every ramification of the
|
|
problem you see and demand that they all be completely excised
|
|
from society, people call you a fanatic. And if you don't look
|
|
for every ramification and demand that it be excised from
|
|
society, people call you inconsistent.
|
|
|
|
What I believe is that no one coordinate patch will map the whole
|
|
world very effectively. There are many phenomena; each
|
|
phenomenon is the controlling phenomenon in some areas and
|
|
insignificant in others. I'm concerned with eliminating
|
|
intellectual property mainly in the field of software, because
|
|
there I see it really uglifying society and causing tremendous
|
|
waste. If it doesn't cause so much waste in the area of music,
|
|
then I don't feel it's so important to change it there.
|
|
Although, there are certain areas where I object to it, and you
|
|
can see the battle is shaping up again because of the ability of
|
|
individuals to copy.
|
|
|
|
You may have heard of the proposed laws to tax recorders and tax
|
|
tape, and pay the money to record companies, or to musicians, in
|
|
proportion to their sales. Well, I'd be happy to see a tax on
|
|
tape or tape recorders to support musicians, but @emph%not% in
|
|
proportion to their sales! If your goal is to help the
|
|
struggling musicians (and most musicians are @emph%really%
|
|
struggling, because our current copyright system doesn't support
|
|
them at all), I'd say that that tax should go to the musicians
|
|
who make a @emph%few% sales, but not very many. Because the ones
|
|
who make a lot are rich, and they don't need a handout.
|
|
|
|
Q: I'm not sure of the legal changes you're proposing. There's
|
|
at least three ways in which software can be proprietary. One
|
|
is copyright laws, which you're obviously against. RMS: yes. Q:
|
|
Another is by entering into a contract: I promise not to copy, I
|
|
promise not to disassemble, I promise to be a bad citizen. The
|
|
third is you can use encryption methods, which perhaps our
|
|
copyright laws, hardware manufacturers support in the processor
|
|
ID [???]. My question is this: are you proposing to make
|
|
entering into certain kinds of contracts illegal, and are you
|
|
proposing to make encrypting in order to hoard software illegal?
|
|
|
|
RMS: Well, I haven't seen hardware copy protection schemes that
|
|
manage to win. Encryption, I agree, can prevent you from
|
|
changing a program, but I don't see how it can prevent you from
|
|
copying it, because you could copy the encrypted thing. Q: but
|
|
you're still avoiding the question... [not true; that was one
|
|
half of the question] A: I would say that a nondisclosure
|
|
agreement like that should be called unenforceable, like gambling
|
|
debts. Clearly to try to stop people from keeping secrets would
|
|
be tyrannical and I wouldn't be in favor of trying to do that.
|
|
The other thing to realize is that trade secrecy is not fully
|
|
built on those contracts. Those contracts are one step you go
|
|
through to establish something as a trade secret. But there's an
|
|
entire body of trade secret law that imposes things on people who
|
|
have not signed those contracts. So in that area, just as in the
|
|
other areas of copyright and patents, there's explicit government
|
|
intervention which has nothing to do with voluntary contracts, to
|
|
give power to software hoarders, and if that were taken so that
|
|
we had nothing but the voluntary contracts, we'd have a lot less
|
|
power in trade secrecy than we do now.
|
|
|
|
Q: One other question. Sometimes you seem very concerned about
|
|
the [??] of software. But when it comes to, for instance,
|
|
supporting musicians, you seem to be saying [????]
|
|
|
|
RMS: The public is @emph%already% supporting @emph%those%
|
|
musicians, and they will make a lot of money anyway, from their
|
|
concerts and so on. And what I'm saying is that obviously, we
|
|
should only have a tax like that if people think it's desirable.
|
|
Maybe people think it's desirable to support starting musicians,
|
|
and musicians whose lives are marginal but who some people like.
|
|
And I think you could set that up in such a way that only a
|
|
person who was yearning to be a musician would consider it
|
|
attractive, and therefore you wouldn't have to worry about
|
|
someone sponging off of it in order to get out of doing any work.
|
|
|
|
Q: While I sympathize with the position you've laid out, it
|
|
reminds of the debate between capitalism and communism. RMS: Oh,
|
|
no, it's very different. I'll explain to you the difference. Q:
|
|
OK, well, the specific point I'd like you to explain then is that
|
|
while communism is appealing, it removes some basic human
|
|
incentives that are based on self-interest.
|
|
|
|
RMS: There are lots of kinds of self-interest, and what they are
|
|
depends on the social situation. There are also lots of kinds of
|
|
competition. For example, there was competition among hackers in
|
|
the old days, for who could do a better program, or could make a
|
|
program shorter and faster. That competition, though, didn't
|
|
involve obstruction; yet it motivated people very powerfully, and
|
|
you can see in many areas of life where people are motivated by a
|
|
wish to excel their rivals, to do better than anyone else had
|
|
done. And they might even spend gigantic amounts trying to do
|
|
this. Have you read about the people who were competing to visit
|
|
all the countries in the world first? They spent incredible
|
|
amounts of money trying to do that. But as for the fundamental
|
|
question, communism and capitalism are similar in that they're
|
|
very concerned with %%how much money should each person get?''.
|
|
Capitalism the position of a person who says %%I want to have the
|
|
power to get all the money that my might can bring me'', whereas
|
|
communism says everyone should have the same amount of money, or
|
|
everybody should have an amount of money that's totally
|
|
determined by what that person needs in some sense. But what I'm
|
|
saying is, we all have to pay less attention to how much money
|
|
each of us has, because we're impoverishing each other by paying
|
|
too much attention to it. [TAPE ENDS.]
|
|
|
|
>> *END* <<
|
|
|
|
(The following was extracted from a public e-mail file and
|
|
is reproduced unedited, with the exception of deletion of
|
|
multiple lines created by the transmission format--eds.)
|
|
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|
|
* * * * COPYRIGHT LAW ** * *
|
|
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|
|
|
|
I've received a couple of requests for more information on
|
|
copyright law. A fairly good introduction is included with the
|
|
netnews (usenet) software. Note that some things have changed
|
|
since this was written (e.g. copyright notices are no longer
|
|
mandatory, penalties for infringement have doubled).
|
|
|
|
One point I think the author should have made is that the basis
|
|
for copyright law in the U.S. is constitutional (Art. I Sec. 8):
|
|
"The Congress shall have Power ... To promote the Progress of
|
|
Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors
|
|
and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective writings
|
|
and Discoveries."
|
|
|
|
I did some rather disgusting postprocessing to make nroff output
|
|
acceptable to BITNET; this should print properly on a printer
|
|
with 66 lines per page and no perforation skip.
|
|
|
|
-=EPS=-
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright Law
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jordan J Breslow
|
|
1225 Alpine Road Suite 200
|
|
Walnut Creek CA 94596
|
|
1 415 932 4828
|
|
|
|
|
|
I am an attorney practicing copyright law and computer law.
|
|
I read a series of queries in net.legal about copyright law and
|
|
was dismayed to find that people who had no idea what they were
|
|
talking about were spreading misinformation over the network.
|
|
Considering that the penalties for copyright infringement can in-
|
|
clude $50,000.00 damages per infringed work, attorneys fees,
|
|
court costs, criminal fines and imprisonment, and considering
|
|
that ignorance is no excuse and innocent intent is not even a
|
|
recognized defense, I cringe to see the network used as a soapbox
|
|
for the ill-informed. For that reason, this article will discuss
|
|
copyright law and license law as they pertain to computer
|
|
software.
|
|
|
|
My goal is to enable readers to determine when they should
|
|
be concerned about infringing and when they can relax about it.
|
|
I also want to let programmers know how to obtain copyright for
|
|
their work. I'll explain the purpose of software licenses, and
|
|
discuss the effect that the license has on copyright. For those
|
|
of you who are programmers, I'll help you decide whether you own
|
|
the programs you write on the job or your boss owns them. I will
|
|
also mention trademark law and patent law briefly, in order to
|
|
clarify some confusion about which is which. Incidentally, if
|
|
you read this entire essay, you will be able to determine whether
|
|
or not the essay is copyrighted and whether or not you can make a
|
|
printout of it.
|
|
|
|
This is a long article, and you may not want to read all of
|
|
it. Here is an outline to help you decide what to read and what
|
|
to ignore:
|
|
1. The Meaning of Copyright from the Viewpoint of the Software User
|
|
1.1 A bit of history
|
|
copyright
|
|
+1.2 The meaning of _________
|
|
public domain
|
|
+1.3 The meaning of ______ ______
|
|
1.4 A hypothetical software purchase
|
|
1.5 Can you use copyrighted software?
|
|
1.6 Can you make a backup copy?
|
|
1.7 Licenses may change the rules
|
|
|
|
+c Copyright 1986 Breslow, Redistributed by permission
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1.8 Can you modify the program?
|
|
1.9 Can you break the copy protection scheme?
|
|
1.10 Summary
|
|
|
|
2. Copyright Sounds Neat -- How Do I Get One?
|
|
Or, How Do I Know If this Program is Copyrighted?
|
|
2.1 How do you get a copyright?
|
|
2.2 How do you lose a copyright?
|
|
2.3 How do you waste a stamp?
|
|
2.4 Do you have to register?
|
|
2.5 How copyright comes into existence
|
|
2.6 The copyright notice
|
|
2.7 Advantages of registration
|
|
2.8 A test to see if you understand this article
|
|
|
|
3. Who Owns The Program You Wrote?
|
|
3.1 Introduction
|
|
3.2 Programs written as an employee
|
|
3.3 Programs written as a contractor
|
|
|
|
4. A Brief Word about Licenses
|
|
4.1 Why a license?
|
|
4.2 Is it valid?
|
|
|
|
5.1 Trademark law explained
|
|
5.2 Patent law
|
|
|
|
6. Conclusion
|
|
|
|
1. The Meaning of Copyright from the Viewpoint of
|
|
the Software User
|
|
|
|
1.1. A bit of history
|
|
|
|
If you're not interested in history, you can skip this para-
|
|
Modern
|
|
+graph. ______ copyright law first came into existence in 1570,
|
|
by an act of Parliament called the Statute of Anne. Like most
|
|
laws, it hasn't changed much since. It was written with books
|
|
and pictures in mind. Parliament, lacking the foresight to
|
|
predict the success of the Intel and IBM corporations, failed to
|
|
consider the issue of copyrighting computer programs.
|
|
|
|
At first, courts questioned whether programs could be copy-
|
|
righted at all. The problem was that judges couldn't read the
|
|
programs and they figured the Copyright Law was only meant to ap-
|
|
ply to things humans (which arguabley includes judges) could read
|
|
without the aid of a machine. I saw some mythical discussion
|
|
about that in some of the net.legal drivel. Let's lay that to
|
|
rest: programs are copyrightable as long as there is even a
|
|
minimal amount of creativity. The issue was laid to rest with
|
|
the Software Act of 1980. That Act modified the Copyright Act
|
|
(which is a Federal law by the way), in such a way as to make it
|
|
clear that programs are copyrightable. The few exceptions to
|
|
this rule will rarely concern anyone. The next question to arise
|
|
was whether a program was copyrightable if it was stored in ROM
|
|
rather than on paper. The decision in the Apple v. Franklin
|
|
case laid that to rest: it is.
|
|
|
|
1.2. The meaning of copyright
|
|
|
|
Now, what is copyright? As it is commonly understood, it is
|
|
the right to make copies of something -- or to put it the other
|
|
way around, it is the right to prohibit other people from making
|
|
copies. This is known as an exclusive right -- the exclusive
|
|
reproduce
|
|
+right to _________, in the biological language of the Copyright
|
|
Act -- and what most people don't know is that copyright involves
|
|
not one, not two, but five exclusive rights. These are (1) the
|
|
exclusive right to make copies, (2) the exclusive right to dis-
|
|
tribute copies to the public, (3) the exclusive right to prepare
|
|
derivative works
|
|
+__________ _____ (I'll explain, just keep reading), (4) the ex-
|
|
clusive right to perform the work in public (this mainly applies
|
|
to plays, dances and the like, but it could apply to software),
|
|
and (5) the exclusive right to display the work in public (such
|
|
as showing a film).
|
|
|
|
1.3. The meaning of public domain
|
|
|
|
Before we go any further, what is public domain? I saw some
|
|
discussion on the net about public domain software being copy-
|
|
public domain
|
|
+righted. Nonsense. The phrase ______ ______, when used correct-
|
|
ly, means the absence of copyright protection. It means you can
|
|
copy public domain software to your heart's content. It means
|
|
that the author has none of the exclusive rights listed above.
|
|
public domain freeware
|
|
+If someone uses the phrase ______ ______ to refer to ________
|
|
(software which is copyrighted but is distributed without advance
|
|
payment but with a request for a donation), he or she is using
|
|
the term incorrectly. Public domain means no copyright -- no ex-
|
|
clusive rights.
|
|
|
|
1.4. A hypothetical software purchase
|
|
|
|
Let's look at those exclusive rights from the viewpoint of
|
|
someone who has legitimately purchased a single copy of a copy-
|
|
righted computer program. For the moment, we'll have to ignore
|
|
the fact that the program is supposedly licensed, because the
|
|
license changes things. I'll explain that later. For now, as-
|
|
sume you went to Fred's Diner and Software Mart and bought a
|
|
dozen eggs, cat food and a word processing program. And for now,
|
|
assume the program is copyrighted.
|
|
|
|
1.5. Can you use copyrighted software?
|
|
|
|
What can you do with this copyrighted software? Let's start
|
|
with the obvious: can you use it on your powerful Timex PC? Is
|
|
this a joke? No. Prior to 1980, my answer might have been No,
|
|
you can't use it!
|
|
|
|
People actually pay me for advice like that! Well think:
|
|
you take the floppy disk out of the zip lock baggy, insert it in
|
|
drive A and load the program into RAM. What have you just done?
|
|
You've made a copy in RAM -- in legalese, you've reproduced the
|
|
work, in violation of the copyright owner's exclusive right to
|
|
reproduce. (I better clarify something here: the copyright own-
|
|
er is the person or company whose name appears in the copyright
|
|
notice on the box, or the disk or the first screen or wherever.
|
|
It may be the person who wrote the program, or it may be his
|
|
boss, or it may be a publishing company that bought the rights to
|
|
the program. But in any case, it's not you. When you buy a copy
|
|
of the program, you do not become the copyright owner. You just
|
|
own one copy.)
|
|
|
|
Anyway, loading the program into RAM means making a copy.
|
|
The Software Act of 1980 addressed this absurdity by allowing you
|
|
to make a copy if the copy "is created as an essential step in
|
|
the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a
|
|
machine and ... is used in no other manner ...." By the way,
|
|
a machine
|
|
+somebody tell me what _ _______ means. If you connect 5 PC's on
|
|
a machine several machines
|
|
+a network is that _ _______ or _______ ________? A related ques-
|
|
tion is whether or not running software on a network constitutes
|
|
a performance. The copyright owner has the exclusive right to do
|
|
that, remember?
|
|
|
|
1.6. Can you make a backup copy?
|
|
|
|
OK, so you bought this copyrighted program and you loaded it
|
|
into RAM or onto a hard disk without the FBI knocking on your
|
|
+door. Now can you make a backup copy? YES. The Software Act
|
|
also provided that you can make a backup copy, provided that it
|
|
"is for archival purposes only ...." What you cannot do, howev-
|
|
er, is give the archive copy to your friend so that you and your
|
|
pal both got the program for the price of one. That violates the
|
|
copyright owner's exclusive right to distribute copies to the
|
|
public. Get it? You can, on the other hand, give both your ori-
|
|
ginal and backup to your friend -- or sell it to him, or lend it
|
|
to him, as long as you don't retain a copy of the program you are
|
|
selling. Although the copyright owner has the exclusive right to
|
|
distribute (sell) copies of the program, that right only applies
|
|
to the first sale of any particular copy. By analogy, if you buy
|
|
a copyrighted book, you are free to sell your book to a friend.
|
|
The copyright owner does not have the right to control resales.
|
|
|
|
1.7. Licenses may change the rules
|
|
|
|
At this point, let me remind you that we have assumed that
|
|
the program you got at the store was sold to you, not licensed to
|
|
you. Licenses may change the rules.
|
|
|
|
1.8. Can you modify the program?
|
|
|
|
Now, you're a clever programmer, and you know the program
|
|
could run faster with some modifications. You could also add
|
|
graphics and an interactive mode and lots of other stuff. What
|
|
does copyright law say about your plans? Well ... several dif-
|
|
ferent things, actually. First, recall that the copyright owner
|
|
has the exclusive right to make derivative works. A derivative
|
|
work is a work based on one or more preexisting works. It's easy
|
|
to recognize derivative works when you think about music or
|
|
books. If a book is copyrighted, derivative works could include
|
|
a screenplay, an abridged edition, or a translation into another
|
|
language. Derivative works of songs might be new arrangements
|
|
(like the jazz version of Love Potion Number 9), a movie
|
|
long version
|
|
+soundtrack, or a written transcription, or a ____ _______, (such
|
|
as the fifteen minute version of "Wipe Out" with an extended drum
|
|
solo for dance parties). In my opinion, you are making a deriva-
|
|
tive work when you take the store-bought word processor and modi-
|
|
fy it to perform differently. The same would be true if you
|
|
translated
|
|
+__________ a COBOL program into BASIC. Those are copyright in-
|
|
fringements -- you've horned in on the copyright owner's ex-
|
|
clusive right to make derivative works. There is, however, some
|
|
adapt
|
|
+breathing room. The Software Act generously allows you to _____
|
|
the code if the adaptation "is created as an essential step in
|
|
the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a
|
|
machine ...." For example, you might have to modify the code to
|
|
make it compatible with your machine.
|
|
|
|
1.9. Can you break the copy protection scheme?
|
|
|
|
Moving right along, let's assume your store bought program
|
|
is copy protected, and you'd really like to make a backup copy.
|
|
You know this nine-year-old whiz who can crack any copy-
|
|
protection scheme faster than you can rearrange a Rubix cube. Is
|
|
there a copyright violation if he succeeds? There's room to ar-
|
|
gue here. When you try to figure out if something is an infringe-
|
|
ment, ask yourself, what exclusive right am I violating? In this
|
|
case, not the right to make copies, and not the right to distri-
|
|
bute copies. Public performance and display have no relevance.
|
|
derivative work
|
|
+So the key question is whether you are making a __________ ____.
|
|
My answer to that question is, "I doubt it." On the other hand,
|
|
I also doubt that breaking the protection scheme was "an essen-
|
|
tial step" in using the program in conjunction with a machine.
|
|
It might be a "fair use," but that will have to wait for another
|
|
article. Anyone interested in stretching the limits of the "fair
|
|
Betamax
|
|
+use" defense should read the Sony _______ case.
|
|
|
|
1.10. Summary
|
|
|
|
Let me summarize. Copyright means the copyright owner has
|
|
the exclusive right to do certain things. Copyright infringement
|
|
means you did one of those exclusive things (unless you did it
|
|
within the limits of the Software Act, i.e., as an essential step
|
|
....).
|
|
|
|
2. Copyright Sounds Neat -- How Do I Get One? Or, How Do I Know
|
|
if this Program is Copyrighted?
|
|
|
|
2.1. How do you get a copyright?
|
|
|
|
If you've written an original program, what do you have to
|
|
do to get a copyright? Nothing. You already have one.
|
|
|
|
2.2. How do you lose a copyright?
|
|
|
|
If you've written an original program, what do you have to
|
|
do to lose your copyright protection? Give copies away without
|
|
the copyright notice.
|
|
|
|
2.3. How do you waste a stamp?
|
|
|
|
If you mail the program to yourself in a sealed envelope,
|
|
what have you accomplished? You've wasted a stamp and an envelope
|
|
and burdened the postal system unnecessarily.
|
|
|
|
2.4. Do you have to register?
|
|
|
|
Do you have to register your program with the U.S. Copyright
|
|
Office? No, but it's a damn good idea.
|
|
|
|
2.5. How copyright comes into existence
|
|
|
|
Copyright protection (meaning the five exclusive rights)
|
|
fix tangi-
|
|
+comes into existence the moment you ___ your program in a ______
|
|
ble medium
|
|
+___ ______. That means write it down, or store it on a floppy
|
|
disk, or do something similar. Registration is optional. The
|
|
one thing you must do, however, is protect your copyright by in-
|
|
cluding a copyright notice on every copy of every program you
|
|
sell, give away, lend out, etc. If you don't, someone who hap-
|
|
pens across your program with no notice on it can safely assume
|
|
that it is in the public domain (unless he actually knows that it
|
|
is not).
|
|
|
|
2.6. The copyright notice
|
|
|
|
The copyright notice has three parts. The first can be ei-
|
|
ther a c with a circle around it (c), or the word Copyright or
|
|
the abbreviation Copr. The c with a circle around it is prefer-
|
|
able, because it is recognized around the world; the others are
|
|
not. That's incredibly important. Countries around the world
|
|
have agreed to recognize and uphold each others' copyrights, but
|
|
this world-wide protection requires the use of the c in a circle.
|
|
On disk labels and program packaging, use the encircled c. Un-
|
|
fortunately, computers don't draw small circles well, so program-
|
|
mers have resorted to a c in parentheses: (c). Too bad. That
|
|
has no legal meaning. When you put your notice in the code and
|
|
on the screen, use Copyright or Copr. if you can't make a cir-
|
|
cle.
|
|
|
|
The second part of the notice is the "year of first publica-
|
|
Publication
|
|
+tion of the work." ___________ doesn't mean distribution by Os-
|
|
borne Publishing Co. It means distribution of copies of the pro-
|
|
gram to the public "by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by
|
|
rental, lease, or lending." So when you start handing out or
|
|
selling copies of your precious code, you are publishing. Publi-
|
|
cation also takes place when you merely OFFER to distribute
|
|
copies to a group for further distribution. Your notice must in-
|
|
clude the year that you first did so.
|
|
|
|
The third part of the notice is the name of the owner of the
|
|
copyright. Hopefully, that's you, in which case your last name
|
|
will do. If your company owns the program -- a legal issue which
|
|
I will address later in this article -- the company name is ap-
|
|
propriate.
|
|
|
|
Where do you put the notice? The general idea is to put it
|
|
where people are likely to see it. Specifically, if you're dis-
|
|
tributing a human-readable code listing, put it on the first page
|
|
in the first few lines of code, and hard code it so that it ap-
|
|
pears on the title screen, or at sign-off, or continuously. If
|
|
you're distributing machine-readable versions only, hard code it.
|
|
As an extra precaution, you should also place the notice on the
|
|
gummed disk label or in some other fashion permanently attached
|
|
to the storage medium.
|
|
|
|
2.7. Advantages of registration
|
|
|
|
Now, why register the program? If no one ever rips off your
|
|
program, you won't care much about registration. If someone does
|
|
rip it off, you'll kick yourself for not having registered it.
|
|
The reason is that if the program is registered before the in-
|
|
fringement takes place, you can recover some big bucks from the
|
|
infringer, called statutory damages, and the court can order the
|
|
infringer to pay your attorneys fees. Registration only costs
|
|
$10.00, and it's easy to do yourself. The only potential disad-
|
|
vantage is the requirement that you deposit the first and last 25
|
|
pages of your source code, which can be inspected (but not
|
|
copied) by members of the public.
|
|
|
|
2.8. A test to see if you understand this article
|
|
|
|
Now, someone tell me this: is this article copyrighted?
|
|
Can you print it?
|
|
|
|
3. Who Owns The Program You Wrote?
|
|
|
|
3.1. Introduction
|
|
|
|
The starting point of this analysis is that if you wrote the
|
|
program, you are the author, and copyright belongs to the author.
|
|
HOWEVER, that can change instantly. There are two common ways for
|
|
your ownership to shift to someone else: first, your program
|
|
might be a "work for hire." Second, you might sell or assign
|
|
|
|
rights
|
|
+your ______ in the program, which for our purposes means the
|
|
copyright.
|
|
|
|
3.2. Programs written as an employee
|
|
|
|
Most of the programs which you write at work, if not all of
|
|
them, belong to your employer. That's because a program prepared
|
|
by an employee within the scope of his or her employment is a
|
|
author
|
|
+"work for hire," and the employer is considered the ______. This
|
|
is more or less automatic if you are an employee -- no written
|
|
agreement is necessary to make your employer the copyright owner.
|
|
By contrast, if you can convince your employer to let you be the
|
|
copyright owner, you must have that agreement in writing.
|
|
|
|
By the way, before you give up hope of owning the copyright
|
|
to the program you wrote at work, figure out if you are really an
|
|
employee. That is actually a complex legal question, but I can
|
|
tell you now that just because your boss says you are an employee
|
|
doesn't mean that it's so. And remember that if you created the
|
|
scope
|
|
+program outside the _____ of your job, the program is not a "work
|
|
for hire." Finally, in California and probably elsewhere, the
|
|
state labor law provides that employees own products they create
|
|
on their own time, using their own tools and materials. Employ-
|
|
ment contracts which attempt to make the employer the owner of
|
|
inventions
|
|
+those off-the-job __________ are void, at least in sunny Califor-
|
|
nia.
|
|
|
|
3.3. Programs written as a contractor
|
|
|
|
Wait a minute: I'm an independent contractor to Company X,
|
|
not an employee. I come and go as I please, get paid by the hour
|
|
with no tax withheld, and was retained to complete a specific
|
|
project. I frequently work at home with my own equipment. Is
|
|
the program I'm writing a "work for hire," owned by the Company?
|
|
Maybe, maybe not. In California, this area is full of landmines
|
|
for employers, and gold for contractors.
|
|
|
|
A contractor's program is not a "work for hire," and is not
|
|
owned by the company, unless (1) there is a written agreement
|
|
between the company and the contractor which says that it is, and
|
|
commissioned work commissioned work
|
|
+(2) the work is a ____________ ____. A ____________ ____ is one
|
|
collective work
|
|
+of the following: (a) a contribution to a __________ ____, (b)
|
|
an audiovisual work (like a movie, and maybe like a video game),
|
|
(c) a translation, (d) a compilation, (e) an instructional text,
|
|
(f) a test or answer to a test, or (g) an atlas. I know you must
|
|
be tired of definitions, but this is what the real legal world is
|
|
made of. An example of a collective work is a book of poetry,
|
|
with poems contributed by various authors. A piece of code which
|
|
is incorporated into a large program isn't a contribution to a
|
|
collective work, but a stand-alone program which is packaged and
|
|
sold with other stand-alone programs could be.
|
|
|
|
So where are we? If you are a contract programmer, not an
|
|
commissioned work
|
|
+employee, and your program is a ____________ ____, and you have a
|
|
|
|
written agreement that says that the program is a "work for hire"
|
|
owned by the greedy company, who owns the program? That's right,
|
|
the company. But guess what? In California and elsewhere the
|
|
company just became your employer! This means that the company
|
|
+must now provide worker's compensation benefits for you AND UNEM-
|
|
PLOYMENT INSURANCE
|
|
|
|
4. A Brief Word About Licenses.
|
|
|
|
4.1. Why a license?
|
|
|
|
When you get software at the local five and dime, the
|
|
manufacturer claims that you have a license to use that copy of
|
|
the program. The reason for this is that the manufacturer wants
|
|
to place more restrictions on your use of the program than copy-
|
|
right law places. For example, licenses typically say you can
|
|
only use the program on a single designated CPU. Nothing in the
|
|
copyright law says that. Some licenses say you cannot make an
|
|
archive copy. The copyright law says you can, remember? But if
|
|
the license is a valid license, now you can't. You can sell or
|
|
give away your copy of a program if you purchased it, right?
|
|
That's permitted by copyright law, but the license may prohibit
|
|
it. The more restrictive terms of the license will apply instead
|
|
of the more liberal copyright rules.
|
|
|
|
4.2. Is it valid?
|
|
|
|
Is the license valid? This is hotly debated among lawyers.
|
|
(What isn't? We'll argue about the time of day.) A few states
|
|
have passed or will soon pass laws declaring that they are valid.
|
|
A few will go the other way. Federal legislation is unlikely.
|
|
My argument is that at the consumer level, the license is not
|
|
binding because there is no true negotiation (unless a state law
|
|
says it is binding), but hey that's just an argument and I'm not
|
|
saying that that's the law. In any case, I think businesses
|
|
which buy software will be treated differently in court than con-
|
|
sumers. Businesses should read those licenses and negotiate with
|
|
the manufacturer if the terms are unacceptable.
|
|
|
|
5. I Have A Neat Idea. Can I Trademark It? What About patent?
|
|
|
|
5.1. Trademark law explained
|
|
|
|
Sorry, no luck. Trademark law protects names: names of
|
|
products and names of services. (Note that I did not say names
|
|
of companies. Company names are not trademarkable.) If you buy
|
|
a program that has a trademarked name, all that means is that you
|
|
can't sell your own similar program under the same name. It has
|
|
nothing to do with copying the program.
|
|
|
|
5.2. Patent Law
|
|
|
|
Patent law can apply to computer programs, but it seldom
|
|
does. The main reasons it seldom applies are practical: the
|
|
patent process is too slow and too expensive to do much good in
|
|
the software world. There are also considerable legal hurdles to
|
|
overcome in order to obtain a patent. If, by chance, a program
|
|
is patented, the patent owner has the exclusive right to make,
|
|
use or sell it for 17 years.
|
|
|
|
6. CONCLUSION
|
|
|
|
I know this is a long article, but believe it or not I just
|
|
scratched the surface. Hopefully, you'll find this information
|
|
useful, and you'll stop passing along myths about copyright law.
|
|
If anyone needs more information, I can be reached at the address
|
|
on the first page. Sorry, but I do not usually have access to
|
|
the network, so you can't reach me there.
|
|
|
|
Thank you. JORDAN J. BRESLOW
|
|
|
|
>> *END* <<
|
|
|
|
(The following is reprinted from public e-mail sources--eds.)
|
|
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|
|
-- Computer Law - State of Wisconsin Statute --
|
|
Chapter 293, Laws of 1981
|
|
943.70 Computer crimes.
|
|
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|
|
|
|
(1) DEFINITIONS. In this section:
|
|
|
|
(a) "Computer" means an electronic device that performs
|
|
logical, arithmetic and memory functions by manipulating
|
|
electronic or magnetic impulses, and includes all input,
|
|
output, processing, storage, computer software and
|
|
communication facilities that are connected or related to
|
|
a computer in a computer system or computer network.
|
|
|
|
(b) "Computer network" means the interconnection of
|
|
communication lines with a computer through remote
|
|
terminals or a complex consisting of 2 or more
|
|
interconnected computers.
|
|
|
|
(c) "Computer program" means an ordered set of instructions or
|
|
statements that, when executed by a computer, causes the
|
|
computer to process data.
|
|
|
|
(d) "Computer software" means a set of computer programs,
|
|
procedures or associated documentation used in the
|
|
operation of a computer system.
|
|
|
|
(dm) "Computer supplies" means punchcards, paper tape,
|
|
magnetic tape, disk packs, diskettes and computer output,
|
|
including paper and microform.
|
|
|
|
(e) "Computer system" means a set of related computer
|
|
equipment, hardware or software.
|
|
|
|
(f) "Data" means a representation of information, knowledge,
|
|
facts, concepts or instructions that has been prepared or
|
|
is being prepared in a formalized manner and has been
|
|
processed, is being processed or is intended to be
|
|
processed in a computer system or computer network. Data
|
|
may be in any form including computer printouts, magnetic
|
|
storage media, punched cards and as stored in the memory
|
|
of the computer. Data are property.
|
|
|
|
(g) "Financial instrument" includes any check, draft, warrant,
|
|
money order, note, certificate of deposit, letter of
|
|
credit, bill of exchange, credit or credit card,
|
|
transaction authorization mechanism, marketable security
|
|
and any computer representation of them.
|
|
|
|
(h) "Property" means anything of value, including but not
|
|
limited to financial instruments, information,
|
|
electronically produced data, computer software and
|
|
computer programs.
|
|
|
|
(i) "Supporting documentation" means all documentation used in
|
|
the computer system in the construction, clarification,
|
|
implementation, use or modification of the software or
|
|
data.
|
|
|
|
(2) OFFENSES AGAINST COMPUTER DATA AND PROGRAMS.
|
|
|
|
(a) Whoever willfully, knowingly and without authorization
|
|
does any of the following may be penalized as provided in
|
|
par. (b):
|
|
|
|
1. Modifies data, computer programs or supporting
|
|
documentation.
|
|
|
|
2. Destroys data, computer programs or supporting
|
|
documentation.
|
|
|
|
3. Accesses data, computer programs or supporting
|
|
documentation.
|
|
|
|
4. Takes possession of data, computer programs or supporting
|
|
documentation.
|
|
|
|
5. Copies data, computer programs or supporting
|
|
documentation.
|
|
|
|
6. Discloses restricted access codes or other restricted
|
|
access information to unauthorized person.
|
|
|
|
(b) Whoever violates this subsection is guilty of:
|
|
|
|
1. A Class A misdemeanor unless subd. 2, 3 or 4 applies.
|
|
|
|
2. A Class E felony if the offense is committed to defraud or
|
|
to obtain property.
|
|
|
|
3. A Class D felony if the damage is greater than $2,500 or
|
|
if it causes an interruption or impairment of governmental
|
|
operations or public communication, of transportation or
|
|
of a supply of water, gas or other public service.
|
|
|
|
4. A Class C felony if the offense creates a situation of
|
|
unreasonable risk and high probability of death or great
|
|
bodily harm to another.
|
|
|
|
|
|
(3) OFFENSES AGAINST COMPUTERS, COMPUTER EQUIPMENT OR SUPPLIES.
|
|
|
|
(a) Whoever willingly, knowingly and without authorization
|
|
does any of the following may be penalized as provided in
|
|
par. (b):
|
|
|
|
1. Modifies computer equipment or supplies that are used or
|
|
intended to be used in a computer, computer system or
|
|
computer network.
|
|
|
|
2. Destroys, uses, takes or damages a computer, computer
|
|
system, computer, network or equipment or supplies used or
|
|
intended to be used in a computer, computer system, or
|
|
computer network.
|
|
|
|
(b) Whoever violates this subsection is guilty of:
|
|
|
|
1. A Class A misdemeanor unless sub. 2,3 or 4 applies.
|
|
|
|
2. A Class E felony if the offense is committed to defraud or
|
|
obtain property.
|
|
|
|
3. A Class D felony if the damage to the computer, computer
|
|
system, computer network, equipment or supplies is greater
|
|
than $2,500.
|
|
|
|
4. A Class C felony if the offense creates a situation of
|
|
unreasonable risk and high probability of death or great
|
|
bodily harm to another.
|
|
|
|
-- Penalties for Infractions --
|
|
|
|
939.50(3) Penalties for felonies are as follows:
|
|
|
|
(a) For a Class A felony, life imprisonment.
|
|
|
|
(b) For a Class B felony, imprisonment not to exceed 20 years.
|
|
|
|
(c) For a Class C felony, a fine not to exceed $10,000 or
|
|
imprisonment not to exceed 10 year, or both.
|
|
|
|
(d) For a Class D felony, a fine not to exceed $10,000 or
|
|
imprisonment not to exceed 5 year, or both.
|
|
|
|
(e) For a Class E felony, a fine not to exceed $10,000 or
|
|
imprisonment not to exceed 2 year, or both.
|
|
|
|
939.51(3) Penalties for misdemeanors are as follows:
|
|
|
|
(a) For a Class A misdemeanor, a fine not to exceed $10,000 or
|
|
imprisonment not to exceed 9 months, or both.
|
|
|
|
(b) For a Class B misdemeanor, a fine not to exceed $1,000 or
|
|
imprisonment not to exceed 90 days, or both.
|
|
|
|
(c) For a Class C misdemeanor, a fine not to exceed $500 or
|
|
imprisonment not to exceed 30 days, or both.
|
|
|
|
>> *END* <<
|
|
|
|
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|
|
* * * * PIRATE EDITORIAL, by * * * *
|
|
(by Mikey Mouse)
|
|
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|
|
BIG BROTHER IN OUR COMPUTER ROOM???
|
|
|
|
Rumour has it that this August, legislation will go
|
|
into effect making it a criminal offense to send or recieve
|
|
electronic porn through the phones, if it crosses state lines.
|
|
According to this rumour, the user need not know that the graphic
|
|
was porno (which is defined as any nudity). Breaking this law
|
|
three or more times will constitute doing so for business
|
|
purposes, subjection the violator to confiscation of all involved
|
|
computer equipment.
|
|
|
|
Leave aside for now that on the surface this wouldn't seem to
|
|
affect a board such as this one, that perpetrators will likely
|
|
outnumber enforcers by several orders of magnitude, and that 15
|
|
year olds (the median age of techno-pervs) are notoriously
|
|
difficult to prosecute. If true, this rumour has some disturbing
|
|
implications.
|
|
|
|
First, it points to the solidification of the legislative concept
|
|
of the electronic community as a genuine entity - almost a 'sixth
|
|
estate', when we have thrived for so long in large part due the a
|
|
BBS is. If it can't vote or be taxed ...
|
|
|
|
Second, it brings BBS's under the scrutiny of a group that many
|
|
find far scarier that congress, the FBI, or even the KGB - that's
|
|
right, the Fallwellians. These morality police have clearly
|
|
established that they have determination, large numbers of
|
|
followers, and, of course, no morals. If they also develop
|
|
sufficient intelligence (well, it MIGHT happen!) to realize that,
|
|
while they can't picket a BBS, they can turn them in to the Feds,
|
|
and badger the Feds into action, the result could be an onslaught
|
|
of M.O.R.O.N.S (Moral Opposition to Rot Of Naughty Smut) and
|
|
FATheads (Falwell Attack Team) infiltrating the PD, and then the
|
|
PI boards.
|
|
|
|
Seriously, though - if this does happen, it will provide one more
|
|
reason for authorities to investigate the contents of BBS's in
|
|
general, something that won't be good for anyone. This rumour
|
|
rings true to me - it's just the sort of thing our increasingly
|
|
Fundamentalist legislature would pass. I'm going to ask around
|
|
on CIS about this, since their PBW area would be affected. If
|
|
anyone else has info about this, I'd like to hear it.
|
|
|
|
(Eds note: To contact MB, call GREAT ESCAPE (312-535-2761) and
|
|
leave a note to "ALL")
|
|
|
|
>> *END* <<
|
|
|
|
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|
|
* * SYSOPS CORNER: WHAT'S GOIN ON AT GREAT ESCAPE * *
|
|
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|
|
|
|
PC Board 14.1/E3 is now running. There are going to be a lot of
|
|
new changes made in the next few weeks for the system. The board
|
|
is going to run Emulex/2 as a PCR/Point door for files and
|
|
messages for all members. In addition, ELITE members who have
|
|
remained faithful to the board in support will also have full
|
|
access to the PCBoard/Prodoor Batch system and will have FREE
|
|
file downloading and unlimited daily time privileges granted to
|
|
them. Except for ELITE members, all users will only have access
|
|
to the new door for transfers and messages. Users who don't keep
|
|
up their share of BOTH posted messages and files will recieve the
|
|
lowest access. We expect to have Node#2 ready and running at
|
|
2400 baud by early August 89' so until then, 1200 Baud is no
|
|
longer supported by this system. Don't be so cheap, get a 2400
|
|
or 9600 modem now... We may even come up under a new
|
|
system,location and phone number TBA...
|
|
|
|
We are now offering file points for credit to all current board
|
|
members who post 2-3 messages per logon. These messages must be
|
|
useful and placed in their correct conference. Only messages
|
|
pretaining to the subject matter of the conference are
|
|
considered, no advertisements! I recommend that each message
|
|
post be informative and more than just 1 or 2 lines. Yes, we are
|
|
very serious. This offer stands and will be honored!
|
|
|
|
I'm happy to report that the new code of PC Board 14.1 now
|
|
supports all File compression formats including .ARC, .PAK, .ZIP,
|
|
LZH and many others As soon as we get a new version of ProDOOR
|
|
later than our 2.9 version, also supports these, we will allow
|
|
all formats on this board for transfer as well as file viewing
|
|
and extracting. The new code also directly supports EMS and
|
|
34800 Baud Rates with v.32 and v.42 functions.
|
|
|
|
The new USR 9600 HST gets 19,200 baud Connect on PCBoard using
|
|
old and new serial chip technology under DOS with up to 26,100
|
|
throughput using MNP Class 5 Data compression and error control.
|
|
We now, of course, support YMODEM-G (Registered DSZ) MNP-5
|
|
transfers for best results.
|
|
|
|
We will NO LONGER be supporting users of 1200 BAUD MODEMS OR
|
|
CONNECTS. So if you have been connecting at 1200 thru PCP or
|
|
using a 1200 baud modem, (Don't be so cheap, get a 2400 now...),
|
|
you will be outta luck. In 2 years of operation, I'd say we have
|
|
only had 2 or 3 users ever contribute regulary at 1200, so it
|
|
seems we would be wasting our's and your time with it. Even 2400
|
|
is slow but it's standard, so we have to support it for awhile.
|
|
Next week, ALL 1200 callers will find a reduction in daily time
|
|
or no time. New Users at 1200 baud will be denied access. All
|
|
users using 4800 Baud modems or connects and above may get better
|
|
access time and daily K than 2400 users.
|
|
|
|
Added several PC Pursuit Zmodem Transmit Varients for diehard
|
|
Pursuit users, try them for better performance on your next PCP
|
|
DSZ download. SuperK Batch protocols are added for Jmodem,
|
|
Super8K, and K9Xmodem batch upload and downloading -Not tested-,
|
|
BATCH TRANSFERS are mainly for REGULAR or ELITE users. Still
|
|
hoping to get BI-Modem going next week. Watch for some new DOORS
|
|
coming next month. Possible Point-System Board Door running
|
|
Emulex/2 also...
|
|
|
|
NEW Private USERS are mainly allowed to download our GELIST.ZIP
|
|
filelist. Bulletins show what we are looking for and good
|
|
uploads get fastest access We have no time or energy to waste on
|
|
anything else...NO DONATIONS, sorry.
|
|
- - - - - - - -
|
|
(If you're a sysop and want to sound off, hype your board,
|
|
or need some info, contact us--eds.)
|
|
|
|
>> *END* <<
|
|
|
|
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|
|
* * * * WANTS AND NEEDS * * *
|
|
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|
|
|
|
This section will cover specialized want lists, so if you have
|
|
a program to swap or are looking for one, here's where to
|
|
announce it.
|
|
>> *END* <<
|
|
|
|
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|
|
MONTHLY REVIEW: THE GREAT ESCAPE (312-535-2761)
|
|
By -=*JEDI*=-
|
|
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|
|
|
|
How do ya review a pirate board? They ain't got no plot, popcorn,
|
|
or 14 year old nymphettes to ogle. And if ya review one you're on
|
|
and the sysop don't like it, off ya goes, and if the sysop's a
|
|
buddy, then the review's gotta be good. So, I says, why not do
|
|
THE GREAT ESCAPE? Might as well jump into the fray and piss off
|
|
everyone. So, here goes.
|
|
|
|
GREAT ESCAPE's a pretty cool board. In fact, guess it's one of
|
|
the top 10 in the U.S. Has about half a gig of latest top line
|
|
warez and not a lot of garbage. Nice thing about it is how it's
|
|
laid out....files are organized into 3 main conferences, and each
|
|
conference is subdivided into specialty areas. The newcomers'
|
|
conference has enough stuff to keep novices happy and give them a
|
|
chance to prove themselves. The Entertainment conference, for
|
|
gamerz, is subdivided into a bunch of areas depending on kinds of
|
|
games ya like, and most of the stuff is cracked. The Business
|
|
conference is the most impressive, and has 14 areas, divided up
|
|
into stuff like desktop publishing, telecomm, and the rest.
|
|
|
|
Neatest thing about GREAT ESCAPE is that you can be pretty sure
|
|
that the stuff will work. Maxx Cougar, the head czar and
|
|
some-time despot, tests each one out before it goes up. If
|
|
there's a problem, he yanks it. If the uploader just made a
|
|
mistake, only a whipping happens. Sometimes mistakes happen, and
|
|
if there's a problem with a program, the sysop(s) will get ahold
|
|
of the original uploader or somebody else is around to make it
|
|
right. There's no lame stuff, and files are nearly always
|
|
complete, directly copied from original disks.
|
|
Lamerz are kicked off immediately, though, so be forewarned.
|
|
|
|
Biggest problem is that most of the stuff is off-line to save
|
|
space. To get it, ya have to request it from the sysops. This can
|
|
be a drag, 'cause sometimes they forget, but if ya keeps at 'em,
|
|
they'll get the requested files up. Guess this is ok, though,
|
|
'cause it keeps room for newer stuff. Sysops don't take much
|
|
shit, which is good, and if ya screw up an upload, be prepared
|
|
for some public scolding.
|
|
|
|
GE's pretty popular, so it's pretty hard to get on. Ya also have
|
|
to prove yourself before higher access is given. Seems like the
|
|
trick is to upload quality stuff over a period of time, don't be
|
|
a jerk, post some good info in the message section, and you'll be
|
|
ok.
|
|
|
|
Users are mostly pretty cool. There's too many message
|
|
conferences to count on my fingers, and seems there's always
|
|
somebody around who can answer questions. One neat thing is ya
|
|
gets credit for posting messages, but they're supposed to be
|
|
intelligent messages, but ya don't have to use big words, which I
|
|
kinda like.
|
|
|
|
On a 10 point scale, comparing with other top boards, guess my
|
|
rating would be
|
|
Warez = 9.5
|
|
Users = 8
|
|
Messages = 8
|
|
Sysops = 9.5
|
|
Ease of use = 9
|
|
--------------
|
|
|
|
>> *END* <<
|
|
|
|
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|
|
* * * * SOME OF OUR FAVORITE BOARDZ * * * *
|
|
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|
|
|
|
206-255-1282 ETHEREAL DIMENSION LARGEST IN NORTHWEST
|
|
212-519-1791 THE RUNNING BOARD BBS
|
|
217-328-8181 THETA-SIGMA 3/12/24 ASK FOR IBMP NODE
|
|
301-384-2938 GATES OF DAWN FIRM DIST. BOARD - NAPPA #1
|
|
303-431-2931 KILLER FAJETAS FROM HELL 150 FREE MEGS
|
|
303-969-8195 THE DISCORDIAN SOCIETY 12/2400 RUNNING PCBOARD
|
|
312-282-9279 SKI LODGE RBBS
|
|
312-297-5385 GAMERS GALAXY GOOD BBS
|
|
312-385-2764 SHADE-TREE, BBS P/D - S/W AND CONFERENCES
|
|
312-390-6594 DEFENDER PCBD
|
|
312-426-8228 THE SHOP RUNNING PC-BOARD - BACKROOM
|
|
312-481-2130 WASTELANDS BBS 3/12/2400 RUNNING PCBOARD
|
|
312-509-1816 DARK SIDE MONARCH
|
|
312-582-9249 FRONT LINE FORM
|
|
312-699-6353 GRAVEYARD FORM
|
|
312-749-8139 WAR ZONE TAG
|
|
312-756-2023 THE JOUSTING FIELDS SPECTRUM 2.1C - 42 MEGS
|
|
312-831-0456 FERS CENTRAL 1200-2400/SBBS
|
|
312-991-4639 WILD WEST MONARCH
|
|
404-921-4635 SUNBANE ELITE BBS 12/24/9600 135+ MGS, EMULEX
|
|
404-923-3870 THE DUCK ELITE BBS 12/2400 RUNNING PCBOARD
|
|
408-251-4689 THE PUBB BBS 3/12/2400 RUNNING EMULEX/2
|
|
408-268-6692 CITY OF THIEVES 3/12/2400 RUNNING PCBOARD
|
|
416-467-6387 EUPHORIA 160 MEGS - FIRM DIST. #1 -
|
|
703-971-7874 CORNERSTONE BBS THE FIRM
|
|
716-636-4540 PLUTONIUM MINES 160 MEGS - VGA GIFS! - PTL -
|
|
719-260-8472 PLAYDO LAND I 3/12/2400 RUNNING SYS-PC 2.7
|
|
801-485-7646 BESERKER BBS 12/2400 RUNNING PC BOARD
|
|
804-451-3551 THE MAGE'S LAIR 3/12/2400 RUNNING PCBOARD
|
|
815-895-5573 SYCAMORE ELITE OPUS (RESTRICTED)
|
|
|
|
If you have the names and numbers of elite boards, pass them
|
|
along.
|
|
|
|
>> *END* <<
|
|
|
|
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|
|
Well, we ran out of room. With luck, PIRATE will appear
|
|
bi-monthly, but we'll see how it goes. Best way to contact us
|
|
is through the home board. If you have any suggestions, or if
|
|
there's something you would like to see covered, let us know, or
|
|
better yet, write it up and call it in.
|
|
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|
|
|
|
|
|
------------------
|
|
COMING NEXT ISSUE:
|
|
*More on computer law
|
|
*Viruses
|
|
*Board of the Month
|
|
*And more. . .
|
|
------------------
|
|
|
|
//////////////////////////////////////////////
|
|
/ /
|
|
/ END Vol. I, No. 1 /
|
|
/ /
|
|
//////////////////////////////////////////////
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