Says dstar:
So make up your mind. Do you want to make more money off of it or not?
I'm completely with Randal on this one. I'm writing a Perl book now. When it's complete, it will be published by Morgan Kaufmann, and it will also be available on my web site for free to everyone in the world. Not because I think it will make more money that way, but because I think it is a good thing to do.

So yes, I did choose that.

Does that mean I have forfeited my right to complain when someone else in some other country with no law enforcement copies the entire book from my web site and put it up on their own web site? No, I have not. I do not want that. I want people to get the book from my site. Partly because I want them to know about me, and mostly because I want to be able to make corrections and updates and not have some old buggy version of my book floating around, embarassing me, but out of my control to fix.

The money here is a distraction. All the blah blahing about whether it is 'theft' or 'property' or whatever is missing the real point. If I meet anyone who says that I am not allowed to care what happens to my book because I have made it freely available, or because copying a book is not theft, or whatever other stupid excuse the people above are using this week, I will kick him in the ass. I brought up my book in this discusssion because it will be available for free, and I think that sweeps away a lot of proprty-theory garbage and makes the real issue clear.

A book is an artistic creation. The artist deserves the right to control the disposition of that creation. It is not right to disrepect the artist's wishes.

If it turned out that someone was mirroring my book without permission I would be very grateful for someone else to point it out to me. I find it astounding that MeowChow or anyone else would consider this to be butting in on my business (or the other person's business), and therefore bad. There is something deeply sick about this point of view. When you see someone being wronged, someone being treated disrespectfully, when you see someone's trust being abused, it is perfectly correct to try to help them in any way you can if that is what you want to do. It seems to me that anyone who recognizes a difference between ethical right and wrong can see this clearly. It is important to do right, to use others with respect. Sometimes minding ones own business is a part of that; sometimes it isn't.

--
Mark Dominus
Perl Paraphernalia

In reply to Re: Software piracy- what would you do? by Dominus
in thread Software piracy- what would you do? by scottstef

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