More on manuals plus rescue

[Fred Cisin]

On Fri, 21 Aug 2015, Mouse wrote:
> But that is not what the word means in law and it is not what the word
> means in ordinary usage.

I'm confused on some of the terminology.  I don't think that I'm alone.
A friend of mine was in law school before he'd believe me that "burglary" 
and "robbery" were not fully synonymous.

> There is nothing you had before such an event
> that you no longer have after,
So, "steal", "theft"? require a component of having already gotten 
possession?
Somebody who takes your packages off of the Fedex or USPS truck is not 
"steal"ing from you?
If your publisher promises you $10 for every copy, then somebody who 
cancels their order to make their own unauthorized copy did not "steal" 
your $10?
Howabout somebody who buys COD and stops payment?  (apparently habitually)
I had a college administrator cancel PO for "non-delivery" AFTER calling 
for installation tech support.

> willing to pay your price would do so.  They are stealing from you
> about as much as someone who sets up shop selling apples for $0.90 a
> pound is stealing from someone next door selling apples for $2.00 a
> pound.

But, after months of hauling six truckloads a day of apples that we 
bought for $0.90 a pound at the orchard to the neighborhood where we sold 
them for $0.90 a pound, we realized that we needed a bigger truck.

> It's illegal (the copyright infringement, that is, not the
> apple-seller).  It's unethical and/or immoral (to most people).  But
> stealing it is not.

Is "theft of service" valid under the law?
Is "Intellectual Property" an oxymoron?

>> That is reality, not the semantics of case law.
> Perhaps you would like others to believe that.  Perhaps you believe it,
> even.  But it is still false.

It is too bad, when "SHOULD" and "LEGAL" are orthogonal.


I have had software that I was not legally entitled to, but also I have 
dealt with infringement of my trademark, and with unauthorized 
distribution of my copyrighted materials.  I haven't patented anything. 
Somebody suggested that failure to curtail infringement be considered 
defacto abandonment - I have to disagree, sometimes it's just not 
reasonable to make the effort.


Somebody said that old software should be very cheap.  And should be 
reduced in price proportionately to the reduced retail value of the 
hardware.  Sure.   Does that mean that the Altair BASIC or Apple 1 
BRICKOUT should now be inordinately expensive?
And labor costs have not gone down.  (See our apple sales business model)
Bob Wallace once explained to me that it seemed that public "perceived 
value" (what they sent in when wanting to pay for what they had acquired 
through copying) was consistently based on Marginal Cost Of Production, 
without a component of development costs.
By contracting for the "help" of publishers, I have had some projects that 
were a lot of work but didn't recoup expenses.