2 Aug
2005
2 Aug
'05
9:04 p.m.
Hello Neil,
> I would like to write this as a direct response
to your letter in
> the SOS issue of August 2005, as it seems to me you have got some
> serious issues badly wrong.
It does appear we disagree on some points.
> You quote the open source folks - let me point
you directly at
> the open source project dealing with DVD-Audio - based around
> reverse engineered commercial discs by the authors own admission.
Do you mean http://dvd-audio.sourceforge.net/ ? That site explicitly
says that the code does not support Meridian Lossless Packing used in
commercial discs.
> This is illegal - it is a criminal offence to do
that.
If you could point me towards the law that says that, I'd appreciate
it. I understood that reverse engineering for the purposes of making
systems compatible was legal in many countries, but not in the USA if
it circumvents a copy-protection mechanism.
> And the argument that software is not property in
the same sense
> as house contents is also either naive or stupid.
If you can invent a physical property replicator, you could make a
fortune on eBay. Maybe someone has, and they're keeping it quiet for
this very reason.
> Just because it is technically possible to burn
an illegal copy
> still does not make it either right or desirable to do so
Please note that I was talking about free software. It's explicitly
legal to burn a copy.
> it is still theft, according to the terms of laws
in the UK.
No, it's not. Even if it's proprietary software, it's copyright
infringement - different law. Free software also depends on copyright
to enforce its licensing terms, so I'm not knocking the validity or
usefulness of copyright.
> It
> is absolute twaddle to suggest that, say, Steinberg would rather
> you use a stolen copy of Nuendo as opposed to a legal copy of
> Logic.
Do you have any evidence for this statement, or have you done any
research? You might like to read Selective Enforcement of Copyright
as an Optimal Monopolistic Behavior:
http://www.bepress.com/bejeap/contributions/vol3/iss1/art18/
> And the closing arguments made about the cost of
Nuendo being
> extortionate? I think not.
I didn't say it was extortionate, I meant that if people pay that much
for a single copy of an application they might expect to get bugfix
updates included in the price. That's just good customer service.
> When you consider that out of the box you get
full AES31, OMF and
> AAF import/export included for the cost, where if you use digi PT
> LE that same functionality will cost you another £575 for the
> Digi Toolkit (you don't even get timecode as standard with PT
> LE), plus yet a further £285 for DigiTranslator, making a total
> of £860 just for OMF and AAF support alone.
I didn't say ProTools was better value. I wasn't making a comparison
between different proprietary applications.
> As for the "known
> bugs" dig, I also suggest that you go read the comments on any
> forum about any software and it's failings.
No need, I know that software has bugs - that's one of the points I
was making.
> And as a regular in the Nuendo forums, I am
constantly
> amazed by just how many people use stolen copies and then have
> the brass neck to try & claim bugs when the odds are very high it
> is the stolen copy that is faulty.
I'm not defending people who infringe copyright, quite the opposite. I
would rather people used free software than infringe copyright.
> I can give many examples of
> this with the current Nuendo. Yes, there are issues. And yes,
> they do get fixed. But with more like you in the world, it will
> take a lot longer.
Oh please! I'm not even a Nuendo user.
> And Audio apps are not the only ones either. I
also moderate at
> another well known companies forums, and yet again we see on a
> daily basis the users of stolen versions pissing and moaning
> about a repeatable bug that existed only in the pre release
> versions. Ask then for their build number, and like the fools
> they are they give it - and we can instantly spot the stolen beta
> copy.
I'm sure that happens a lot, but it never happens to me. I use Linux
and free software for nearly everything. I do have a copy of Adobe
Reader, but I downloaded that from Adobe's own site.
> You state you won't "just lend your
guitar to anyone" in one
> sentence, and in the next deny software companies the same right.
I'm not denying anyone anything, and in fact I would like to see
proprietary software companies make it difficult to copy their
software - reintroducing hardware dongles, for instance. Their
userbase would probably drop to a tiny fraction of what it is now.
> Our industry needs thieves like it needs an extra
hole in the
> head.
We agree on that. There's more than one kind of rip-off though.
> I wonder how much stolen software is installed to
your
> system??
None at all. I don't even have a copy of Windows, so I'm not sure how
I could run it even if I had it. Would you like a package list from
this machine?
Cheers!
Daniel