On 5/3/03 10:25 AM, "Michael Bigley" <wakinyan at fuse.net> wrote: >> The companies that hide behind the RIAA, and abuse the DMCA, deserve >> whatever befalls them, and if the users of Personal Computers wake >> up one day [in the not-too-distant future] to find their every >> movement restricted and/or, monitored, after siding with these lying >> 'whiners'...well then, they deserve their limited usage and lack of >> privacy, also. > > I agree that this is not a "black and white" issue. Yes, the bottom > line is stealing is stealing. However, piracy has benefits. Exactly. Pirates and domestic terrorists(Warez users) deserve some compensation for the growth of businesses, and the entire 'Net. A free copy of registered Adobe, for example, used only for personal observation without making money off of it's creations are really bargain graph and chart stimulators, sales stimulators, a popularization method, an education tool and provide freely other marketing valuables for the Adobe team. The free use of said software: should be it's own compensation, and not crime scene evidence. And of course they aren't stupid, they milk it for all it's worth, very quietly, and I dare say unethically. Is stealing from criminals(warez folks) not still stealing? Call it what you like, but software companies steal from the non-paying warez community. If it weren't for those that use downloaded warez, RIAA would still be pushing $20 music CD's on MTV and Blockbuster and collecting their whopping paychecks from starving artists, as was the industry standard in 1995. The bottom line is that STEALING IS STEALING. Software companies should be sued for deliberately skirting anti-warez and hacking implementation in their software. XP and other MS apps, such as Terminal Services, is an example of successful network anti-serial number activation. Interestingly enough, MS successful security activations are in use only by software used normally by business, and not by the masses, an example of their being fully aware of the consequences of locking down software.