I will attempt to refute. Please see below.
--Alan
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ryan Minnig [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 1999 10:37 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: cracking
>
> Reverse engineering as a copyright infringement is an ill conceived law
> made probably by someone who had thier pockets padded by a coroporation
> with too much money on thier hands.
> Now, don't get me wrong, there are of course cases in which a company
> will reverse engineer the competition's software (or hardware) for the
> only purpose to destory the competition. And even in this case the
> reverse engineering is not wrong, the act of destroying your competition
> is the unjust act here.
Civil disobedience is one way to react to unjust laws. However, the law
remains. My suggestion is to have the law rewritten correctly.
>
> Did you know that it is a federal offense to have a gun within 300ft of a
> public school?
> Another ill conceived law written no doubt by someone that has never had
> a shotgun behind the seat in their truck for the SOLE purpose of hunting
> small game. And NO, we're not talking about it being OK to have guns in
> public schools, it's just that the author of the law didn't see all sides
> before making the act (whether intentional or not) punishable.
It is not unlawful to carry a gun within a school zone (actually, a school
zone extends to 1000ft) is the weapon is not loaded OR the weapon is in a
locked case or firearms rack. You may carry an unloaded weapon across a
school property for the purpose of hunting provided you have previous
permission to do so.
> Even if I have a legitimate copy of some software package I **WILL** do
> whatever I d*mn well please with the software. Saying that I am not free
> to (either randomly or not) change bytes with a hex editor or
> disassembler is foolishness, especially for my own personal use.
> Distribution on the other hand is a NO NO. Note a partial of my original
> post as follows:
Just because you are licensed to use software does not equate to owning the
software. You may use the software in accordance to the terms of the license
or you can not use the software at all. The freedom to choose is yours
entirely. If you do not like the way the software functions, you may contact
the vendor to have your functionality added/modified. You can also choose to
go to another vendor who provides the functionality you want. You can also
choose to write the software yourself so that it is exactly yours and
exactly what you want.
> And you're not allowed to have cookies befor dinner either. A surefire
> way to get someone to do something is to tell them not to do it. A "Do
> not use my software after 30 days without buying it" stament is just
> inviting trouble if you have nothing to back it up.
I think the "cookies before dinner" analogy doesn't exactly equate to legal
agreements or laws. Besides, morally, I think that just because you CAN do
something doesn't always equate to you SHOULD do something.
> Your opinion is your own, and I encourage many others to state theirs as
> well. But, if I acquire some software (whether by distributed CD, floppy
> or internet download) and I change it to suit my needs, that is not only
> ethical, but also enofrces Darwinism. I believe that if you are 'smart
> enough' to do this all the power to you. Some poor bas*ard didn't have
> clue how to either protect, or market his software well enough. "Here is
> my full version of software on CD with a stupid time limit. Please take
> my software and crack it in a couple of hours."
Same comment as above, in my opinion. The ability to differentiate between
being able to do something and actually doing it is part of ethics as well.
Because I can destroy mailboxes and some poor bas*ard didn't have a clue how
to protect theirs doesn't equate that I should beat their mailbox off of
their post with a baseball bat.
> OK folks, let's face it hacking, cracking, blah, blah, blah will never
> go out of style as long as there is motivation to do so.
> Find a way to make your money otherwise.
> Do like M$, charge outragoues prices for buggy, overbloated, unstable
> software, then release the so called 'internet updates' later on.
I agree that it will probably not go out of style. Self motivation to find
out how things tick is easy to understand. Motivation that some get from
cracking then distributing the result to anyone who asks for it is more
difficult for me to understand. Personally, I don't believe it is a money
issue. There are plenty of low cost solutions out there. If we did like M$,
then crackers would have even more "justification" for cracking our
products.
