09.30.2002 -

well, this is the montly closing entry and i'm sorry to say that i didn't have much planned for it. sigh.. too much hw! =( however, my website has hit a new record. OVER 1400 hits in september '02!!! I mean that highest before was in February '02 with merely 800 hits!

well, i'll end this month with a little debate cunndogg and i had. think about this question: "Let's say hypothetically you know that you'd never buy this certain item, but you had the means to reproduce it, and you do. Does that constitute as stealing?" okay, first of all, many of you might bring up the point of selling. You don't sell it, it's just for personal usage. Cunndogg brought up the pt of if you are sure you won't buy it, then you aren't depriving the original creator anything since even if you don't reproduce this item, the original creator still wouldn't have gotten any money from you. I brought up the point that this is just stealing the research and work the creator had to do. Cunndogg says the research and work is already done, therefore you can't really undo that. And stealing his work/research doesn't deprive him of anything either IF you knew you weren't going to buy the item in the first place. Cunndogg brings up the example of a Lexus. Let's say someone had the means to reproduce a Lexus. He knows he'll never buy one because it's just too expensive and outta his league. He reproduces one. He doesn't deprive the Lexus creator any monetary value or raw material. I thought about this for awhile, and came back that the victim here isn't really the Lexus creators, but the public instead. since you didn't have to pay for a Lexus, while everyone else does, you're depriving them of their money which you and them share the same luxury. cunndogg says that's not really depriving them since they were willing to pay for it, but he did say because Lexus are luxury items, reproducing it will cause it's value to decrease. So we go to another example, software. We randomly chose adobe photoshop just for the heck and the amazing price tag on it. Let's say that a student knew that he/she will never purchase the software. would it be stealing if he downloaded the software for free and used it. on the other hand, there's a another student that NEEDS the software for a certain class, but he doesn't have the connections to download the software for free. So he was FORCED to buy it while the other student doesn't. Cunndogg says that the student who got the software for free, in no way deprived the student who actually bought the software. i said while the student who didn't buy the software has $400 extra (made up #) to spend, the student who did might've used his lunch money for a year. I'm saying that IF it is in your power to buy it, and you don't because you know you'll never buy it, then therefore you're depriving the other student of that $400 that he could've spent on other things. Cunndogg says that the 2 students are in no way connected. and even so, adobe photoshop's main target are businesses. if student's use them it only makes them become more of a standard therefore actually helping adobe out. The argument sort've ended there with other examples including music/mp3 and etc.

I just thought of another rebuttal however. Let's say IF everyone bought a product, generally, prices will drop yielding more customers. But if half the consumers that uses this product doesn't pay for it, to make up for lost revenue, they'll have to increase the price on the remaining customers. therefore, is the victims the public?

it's a nice question to ponder on and if you'd like to submit any feedback, feel free to email me. my email is located on the left beneath the menu. ^_^x

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