Subj : Should EMulation....
To   : Tinman
From : Amcleod
Date : Thu Jun 08 2000 01:06 pm

RE: Should EMulation....
BY: Tinman to Amcleod on Thu Jun 08 2000 02:35 pm

 > If you ask me, pi8s are shooting themselves in the foot by taking there
 > activities into the mainstream [i.e napster] it's almost like thay don't
 > realises that what thay are doing is really illegal. "in the old days" SysOp
 > and warez groups had to be compulsivly carefull for fear of a rade on there
 > houses. These days i guess poeple just don't care <shrug>

You knmow, once upon a time you'd make six tapes of that new album for your
friend.  But no matter how good your turn-table the Signal/Noise ratio on the
tapes was higher than on the original.  Those six friends made six copies each,
so now there were 42 pirated copies out there.  And they were all of a
less-than-mint quality, with the majority having the S/N ratio was _double_
bad.  If you went another iteration you are talking 1296 tripple-poor tapes or
a total of 1338 copies.

That was then.  Now, the copies are digitally perfect.  The copies of the
copies are also digitally perfect.  And so on and so forth.  And you're not
talking a thousand copies either.  Thanks to the net, you're talking _millions_
of copies in a weekend!

Now, I work in an Intellectual Property industry.  If I write a piece of
software (or a song, or a novel) and I _choose_ to give it away, well that's my
business.  But if I sell copies of it for a buck a pop, and count on sales to 
bring in the dough to feed my family and get everyone a new Roller, then that's
my business too.  I don't think I'd be too pleased to discover that millions of
copies were being given away with the thinly-veiled connivance of the Napster
people!

Previously, it hasn't paid to chase up a few hundred people making low-quality
tapes.  After all, the real purchaser would say "No thanks, I'll get a genuine
copy that sounds _good_!" so sales were not being affected too bad.  But when
you're talking _millions_ of people...  it's another story!  I think Metallica
should select about 10,000 people and put them all in small-claims court for
$500 each.  (Select from the list of 300,000+ names of known pirates that they
have, I mean.)  They may not get any money - hell it might cost them money, but
at least they would be making future pirates think twice.  And a $50M case
against Napster might cauyse a bit of a rucuss as well!

.