New subject: Fwd: [edmemo] Re. Letter in August Edition from Daniel James

2 Aug 2005

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

Re: Fwd: [edmemo] Re. Letter in August Edition from Daniel James