about warez.at

[Alessandro Rubini]

Hello.

I don't agree with you about the BSA. Let me explain why their actions
damage the Free Software movement.

Mostly the problem is just in their "playing the public service". It's
not strange that the behaviour is against the law (or it should be,
see my other post).

The main problem nowadays is that most people do not even know Free
Software exists, they feel it normal and unavoidable that proprietary
licenses are so strict. People had understtod the "poor programmer"
tale, the "necessity of copyright protection", the "copying music for
personal use is damaging the poor singer" and all other
"intellectual-property lies".

Wasn't it in this list that someone suggested to write a "raise
consciousness howto"? There is no consciousness of user's *rights* to
use copyrighted material, and the BSA (and Disney, and Holliwood, and
Warner, and ...) tries to *lower* people consciousness about the
issue.

So why is the site bad? Because it reinforces in the audience (and I
expect them to have quite a good audience, given the amount of "meta"
tags they use) the idea that "copying is evil". And the idea that the
BSA is protecting the law, so it is good for society, for the economy
and for the poor author.

What we need is raise consciousness, and that's why we should stop
such disinforming campaign. And if we succeed we should try to make
the newspapers know that they are misbehaving.

So, while we are not for making illegal copies of proprietary software
(not piracy, please), we are definitely against misrepresenting a
commercial entity with a definite interest in the market for a
good-will organization that helps the state in fighting crime.

> I´m not quite sure what it would help us to show the BSA that they are 
> misbehaving. The BSA is a group of Marketing freaks, who have to job to do 
> publicity against software piracy.

Please add "in order to sell more proprietary software". They don't
want "piracy" to go away by making all software free. You were joking,
definitely :)

/alessandro
-- 
Quello che scrivo rappresenta solo il mio personale punto di vista,
non rispecchia l'opinione di organizzazioni di cui faccio o ho fatto parte.