30 days trial immune to set clock back in time?

[reckoning54]

Also, theft of services is not even relevant here. Theft of services
is if you use a service the providing of which causes ongoing costs of
some sort to the service's provider, without permission.

[insult deleted]

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

Using software in my own home is not using a service, save a) the
electric power utility and b) any network service accessed by or
through that software.

For example, if I use Firefox to connect to www.foobar.com, I'm using
my local utility company's electric service, my ISP's service, and
some network service provided by whoever operates the domain
foobar.com. However, I am not using any other services by doing so, in
particular any service of Mozilla's (assuming they don't operate
foobar.com).

If I submit a bug report because Firefox blows up at www.foobar.com,
then I'm using a Mozilla-provided service. If I'm downloading an
update, at that time I'm using a Mozilla-provided service. But not if
I'm just using the software without touching Mozilla-operated sites,
because Mozilla does not have to do anything minute by minute for me
to continue to use Firefox, although the electric company does and my
internet provider does.

This is much the same as how when I sit in my office chair I am not
consuming a service provided by the chair's manufacturer. Perhaps I
was, briefly, when I first obtained the chair, and I would be if I
called their 800 number to report a quality problem or something, but
I'm not if I'm just sitting in it.

My chair, my copy of Firefox -- these are products, not services.

Ditto the OP's software, unless it relies for its functioning on a
network service also furnished by the OP, or relies for its
functioning on frequent updates (as is the case with e.g. antivirus
software; even then, the updates are a service, the engine isn't, and
if you don't keep it up to date you're using a product but not a
service, though it may not be a very useful product once it gets
significantly out of date).

Your understanding of the terms "product" and "service", and of the
differences between these, is clearly inadequate. Please go away and
don't bother posting to this thread again until you've at least
studied some Econ 101.

Theft of services occurs anytime you use a service
without permission. The provider's cost structure has nothing to do with it.

One is only using a service when one is using something that the
provider is providing in some sort of ongoing manner, rather than
something that the provider manufactured at some earlier date but then
can be used autonomously without further involvement of the provider.
Again, this is Econ 101.

Electric utility: service.
Electrical wall socket: product, though not very useful without
service.
Antivirus updates: service.
Antivirus software: product, though not very useful without service.
World of Warcraft server access and game playing on it: service.
World of Warcraft software: product, though not very useful without
service.
Chair: product.
Microsoft Excel: product.
Microsoft product support: service.
OP's software: product.
OP's forums, bug-fix form, web site, download servers, etc.: services.
Thunderbird: product.
This newsgroup: neither.
Google Groups: service.
Google web search: service.
Firefox: product.
Mozilla bug report forms: service.

I hope the pattern is now becoming apparent to you.

<snip long [insult deleted]>

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

You can't have stolen something if nothing of anybody else's goes
missing, or in the case of expenses, goes up, due to your actions.

[implied insult deleted]

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

theft is theft whether or not you get caught

You have severely misunderstood my explanation.

If my use of something is undetectable without spying on me, obviously
it's a product and not a service and obviously I have not stolen
anything. If I had stolen something, this fact would be detectable by
the rightful owner when he noticed something of his had gone missing!
Likewise if I stole electricity by tapping a line beyond my meter, the
electric company would detect a power drain.

You seem to be likening my (hypothetical!) use of the OP's software
after jailbreaking it to tapping that electric line, but it's more
like setting up a solar panel on my roof and reducing my usage of grid
electricity that way. I may be metered for less of the hydro company's
electricity in the latter case, but that's because I'm actually using
less of their electricity. They won't find any mysterious power drain
coming from my neighborhood that isn't accounted for by anyone's
metered usage, unlike in the case where I actually stole some of
theirs.

And the OP's behavior is as if a hydro company tried to use its strong
bargaining position (contract with us or do without) to coerce
customers into not installing solar or other supplemental power
sources that would result in their selling less. Hardly a business
practise to be endorsed (particularly not given the present problems
with fuel prices, global warming, and so forth!) ...

or wther there is an incremental cost to the victim.

If there is no cost to the "victim", there is clearly no victim at
all, and therefore no theft nor any other crime.

For someone to be a victim, they have to have been harmed in a
criminal manner. And no, the possible loss of future profits, sales,
or what-have-you is not criminal harm, or opening a burger joint
opposite a pre-existing one would have to be wrong (and indeed,
illegal) too.

See above. You are insane.

My sanity notwithstanding, [vicious false accusation deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me
are at all true.

Not only have I not stolen anything, I have not even infringed the
OP's so-called "intellectual property" or breached his or her so-
called "contract". I have not touched the OP's software at all. In
fact, all I did was suggest, in good faith, that the OP reconsider his
or her choice of business model! That is hardly theft or any other
crime. In fact, it's protected speech under the Constitution.

[several paragraphs worth of unused quoted material deleted]

Please learn some netiquette, particularly vis-a-vis trimming unused
quoted material to save bandwidth and reduce clutter in your replies.

Taking away my freedoms and property rights, and those of others,
ultimately including his own(!), is hardly "a legitimate goal" in a
free and just society.

You have [several insults deleted]

You are wrong. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied
about me are at all true.

I clearly have a superior understanding of economics to you, since you
can't even reliably distinguish a product from a service!

said, you have the freedom and the right to be [insult deleted]

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

Go learn a few things about a) netiquette, b) etiquette more generally
(particularly vis-a-vis name-calling), c) logic (particularly vis-a-
vis the fallacy named /argumentum ad hominem/, and d) economics.
Afterward, you may be welcome to post replies to me again. Emphasis on
"may".

 

[reckoning54]

He is not asking for a piece of bread. He is asking for a chunk of
everyone's property rights to go away. Including, unwittingly, his own.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me
are at all true.

If I decide to design it so that it has a free trial period, after which you
must pay for it to continue working -- including strategies that thwart
attempts to disable that behavior -- that is simply how the software works.

And if a user works around your nasty, narrow-minded, and futile
attempts to create artificial scarcity, that is simply how free
citizens and free markets work. They see artificial scarcity as damage
and route around it.

My current home project happens to be free for whomever wants it (because I
wrote it as a hobby). If I were trying to support my family, I would want to
be paid for it. One might say, by giving it away free, I am depriving some
other developer of income he needs to feed his family.

That's how this kind of ridiculousness a) gets started and b)
escalates. The end result would obviously be to outlaw all competition
as "taking bread off some poor schmuck's (usually a multi-billion-
dollar corporation, mind) table", and after that, as history has
taught us, comes the secret police and the gulags and the complete
failure of innovation, industry, and eventually basic services,
leading to a massive collapse and breakup into kleptocratic fiefdoms
with loose nukes.

If you had your way, by 2050 we'd have a bunch of ex-American
republics, with the People's Republic of New England at war with Free
California and the Dominion of Kansas caught in the middle. And global
black markets flooded with who knows what nasty things. Not to mention
a technological level not much more advanced than today's, with China
the world superpower with the highest standards of living and vastly
superior technology.

Is that the world you want your grandkids to be born in?

 

[reckoning54]

@coldrain.net> wrote:

[snip]

NO FEEDBACK LOOPS!

If you have something to say to me, say it in a reply to one of my own
posts.

(e-mail address removed) wrote:
[...]

 Taking away my freedoms and property rights, and those of others,
ultimately including his own(!), is hardly "a legitimate goal" in a
free and just society.

You have [insults deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that Dave has said or implied about me
are at all true.

To which Paul

Who? Nobody participating in this thread appears to have that name.

Twisted will reply by replacing the quote with  
"implied insult deleted" and stating "None of the nasty things that you  
have said or implied about me are at all true."
Naturally.

One of the most [insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me
are at all true.

 

[reckoning54]

[unused quoted material deleted]

Please learn to trim.

You're welcome to perform any calculations that you want.

Oh, thank you for conceding this discussion.

You're not welcome to take the OP's work product as your own.

Sure I am, if the OP chooses to give a copy to me, or if I buy one off
him or her.

Same as if I buy a chair from IKEA and then take it home and sit in
it; I'm taking someone's (probably an underpaid worker in China) work
product as my own.

Paying money to someone while taking their work product as one's own
is a very commonplace and normal activity in just about any society
more advanced than hunter-gatherer; it's called "buying something in a
market".

You really need to brush up on your Economics 101 before you continue
this discussion.

[implied insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me
are at all true.

Come to think of it, in your world the school shouldn't charge you
tuition - their costs don't increase for one more student.

That's nonsense, and more significantly, it's nonsense that I never
stated or implied.

Do not put words in my mouth again. That is incorrect. Stop being
dishonest.

Obviously, a school has many costs that scale in proportion to the
number of students. For starters, the number of instructors grows
proportionally to the number of students (depending, it may be
anywhere from 1/10 to 1/400 or so of the latter). Various other costs
also rise, as schools tend to provide additional services that
students use besides actual instruction in various subjects, and the
providing of which requires ongoing labor or the consumption of
materials or both, growing in proportion to the amount of usage.

In that case, go ahead and skip the
registrar and just show up for class.

That's often possible, if you just want to observe without doing
coursework, interacting much, or obtaining a grade and new credentials
of any sort. Of course, even just standing by the door watching
consumes some of the limited space in the lecture theatre, and they
may charge for the privilege (typically calling this "auditing" the
class). If you can observe remotely (e.g. if it's televised on an
educational channel, or the course notes and perhaps a blog are
online) you can do so at little to no incremental cost to them and
typically for free. (Terrestrial and satellite TV costs don't scale
with the number of subscribers, unlike cable. Internet distribution
that employs viral methods don't produce provider costs that scale
with usage, unlike central servers. So this may vary. Typically,
though, web site and TV costs are covered by advertising, and you'd
only pay directly for cable TV service or, due to the same kind of
artificial scarcity shenanigans that started this whole thread, for
satellite.)

 

[reckoning54]

[snip]

NO FEEDBACK LOOPS!

What I write in response to Roedy is no skin off your nose.

The expiration behavior should be clearly stated in the license or download
agreement. If you don't like the fact that my software "decays" or "rots" or
"expires", you're free to opt out and find another vendor.

It's ridiculous. You would perform extra work to make your product
artificially less functional than it otherwise would have been? How
perverse.

Anyone who finds that morally offensive is free to offer an alternative --
if you prefer that model, then by all means support them with your business!

That is exactly what I do. I hardly ever pay for software these days,
only for ongoing services such as support. I mainly patronize FOSS
providers such as Mozilla.

So what? I can still design my software in a way that limits it's lifetime.

Sure you can. It's just stupid to do so, and not morally wrong for
someone else to undo your nasty bit of user-hostile programming.

It is a "feature", no different than any other feature

Sure it is. A genuine feature provides added value to the end-user.
What you are discussing not only fails to do so, it actually REMOVES
value for the end-user. That is not a feature; it is a hole where a
feature used to be.

Yep -- in case you somehow hadn't guessed or heard this before, the
fact that a copy of a piece of software does not intrinsically wear
out or break down from age is a feature, not a bug. So is the fact
that information can be reproduced at zero marginal cost, and without
the involvement of the originator of that information.

Here's a suggestion: You should avoid software that contains features you
strongly dislike.

I already do avoid software that contains intentional bugs or
deliberately lacks features.

If my profit and market share diminishes as a result, I will be forced to
change it (it's the free market at work here).

And I'll be right there to tell you "I told you so".

(P.S. judging by your behavior it looks like maybe you're a sockpuppet
of the thread's OP. Are you?)

Spam is free.

Irrelevant comments in Usenet posts are also apparently free.

If there were a cost associated with it, spam would die out overnight.

There is a cost associated with spam, but it's incurred by the
recipient. The economics of spam closely resembles the economics of
air pollution, water pollution, and various other environmental no-
nos.

The economics of spam is also utterly irrelevant to the present
discussion.

That is *your* preferred embodiment.

That is *the* fairest way to robustly do what was described, and it's
not that dissimilar from the industry-standard way to fund R&D and
startups in, well, pretty much every other industry on earth.

Choose the vendors that embrace it.

Already do, it and other business models that don't involve artificial
scarcity or infringements of my property rights.

If enough people do that, the other models will die a natural death in the
free market.

That process has already begun. Hence my recommendation to the OP.

A century ago, I'd have been noticing Stanley steamers and very early-
model Fords putt-putting on the streets in small but growing numbers,
put two and two together, and advised people not to invest heavily in
buggy whip futures.

For exactly the same reasons as I made my recent recommendation to the
OP here.

You are at liberty to vote with your dollars every day of your life.

Of course.

Say, is it just my imagination, or are several people here laboring
under the misapprehension that I advocated something other than the OP
choosing, of his or her own volition, a different and less user-
hostile business model?

If that is true, then people will gravitate to it naturally, and you will
eventually get what you want.

See above -- but it's not about what I want, it's about what is best
for the OP. Entering the buggy whip market while Ford is busy erecting
its second, larger assembly plant simply is not wise, and I decided to
point that out when I heard someone announcing their intentions to do
so.

If not, then you will have to put up with a
model you don't like, but one that the majority of vendors and customers
prefer.

No, customers do not, as a rule, prefer their products to be less
useful than they otherwise might be, and especially prefer their
products not to have been deliberately sabotaged. Remember the
infamous exploding Pinto and other backfirings of "value engineering"
in the automotive industry, culminating in the domestic manufacturers
eventually losing enormous chunks of market share to Japanese
manufacturers?

 

[reckoning54]

I believe you have exposed the heart of the matter. This is perfectly
reasonable, given a sufficiently clear statement of the expiration
behavior.

Sabotaging your customer's property is "perfectly reasonable", so long
as you actually tell them in advance that you intend to do so and, in
a fit of stupidity, they choose you as their supplier anyway?

After taking what psychoactive substances?

I would consider software that did so without a clear warning as
malicious.

I consider software that has malicious behavior to be malicious
regardless of whether it does so with full disclosure. An awful lot of
spyware actually has full disclosure of its behavior buried somewhere
in a mass of legalese, but few people consider it to be legitimate
behavior even so. This is no different and even serves the same
motive: profit, even at the expense of consumer rights and common
decency.

I would view the failure to disclose as fraud.

Yes, with failure to disclose the provider has additionally
perpetrated fraud as well as sabotage.

I do not suggest that this would entitle me to violate the trial period,

No; your own property rights in your hardware and the data stored
thereupon is what entitles you to do so, absent a genuine, legally
entered into contract not to do so (e.g. if you had to agree verbally
or, especially, in writing not to do so before the vendor would hand
you your shiny new copy of the software; some pile of legalese sprung
on you after the transaction has already taken place does not qualify
by any stretch).

but it would tend to vitiate a vendor's claim for infringement.

Unless you distributed a copy of the software, you didn't infringe
copyright unless your copy infringed to begin with; assuming that you
didn't, the worst you did do is breach a contract, and that only if
you entered into a genuine contract in the first place, that contract
contained a clause forbidding the actions in question, and a court of
competent jurisdiction did not strike that clause down as
unconscionable or otherwise unenforceable.

This is much like how if I failed to return a library book by its due
date, but did not copy it, I'd be guilty of some sort of breach of the
library's rules and liable to get fined a few dollars, but I would not
be "guilty" of the "crime" of copyright infringement.

(Library due dates, mind you, have economic justification in that the
library has a finite supply of books and while you have one they are
missing one, unlike when you have gotten a digital copy of software
without disturbing the copied copy.)

IANAL. YMMV.

That's for sure.

 

[reckoning54]

[implied insult deleted]

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

 

[Qu0ll]

[implied insult deleted]

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

Have you ever wondered why so many people seem to say or imply things about
you which you claim are not at all true? I'll help you out - they are yet
to catch on to the fact that you are a mindless troll. You have no interest
in credible technical discussions, you only seek to argue in circles about
nothing until everyone wises up and starts ignoring you. Then you change
socks and start doing it all over again. Further, you seem to feel that
this abhorrent behaviour entitles you to deprive hard working software
developers of their legitimate reward for hundreds of hours of effort. As a
true pest, you love annoying people and then basking in the attention you
receive as a result.

Personally, I wish everyone would stop feeding this troll so that we can get
back on topic.

--
And loving it,

-Qu0ll (Rare, not extinct)
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
[Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me]

 

[Dave Miller]

[unused quoted material deleted]

Please learn to trim.

Please learn to think

<snipped without reading>

cc: kill file.

 

[reckoning54]

[snip]

NO FEEDBACK LOOPS!

What I write in response to Peter is no skin off your nose.

[implied insult deleted]

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

Have you ever wondered why so many people seem to say or imply things about
you which you claim are not at all true?

No. It's quite obvious. Some people don't like me, so they lie about
me in public. In other words, like pretty much everybody else on the
planet, I have a few enemies.

There's really no mystery here.

 I'll help you out - they are yet to catch on to the fact that [insults
deleted]

No, you're the stupid one and the troll.

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

in credible technical discussions, you [false accusation deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me
are at all true.

you seem to feel that [more insults deleted]

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

you ... deprive hard working software developers of

I deprive nobody of anything.

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

As a true [insult deleted], you love annoying people

No, you are lying.

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

Personally, I wish everyone would stop ... so that we can get back on
topic.

You first.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the troll.

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

 

[reckoning54]

[unused quoted material deleted]

Please learn to trim.

[insults deleted]

No, you're the stupid one.

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

 

[Chronic Philharmonic]

Would you give him a stone if he asked for a piece of bread?

He is not asking for a piece of bread. He is asking for a chunk of
everyone's property rights to go away. Including, unwittingly, his own.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me
are at all true.

If I decide to design it so that it has a free trial period, after which
you
must pay for it to continue working -- including strategies that thwart
attempts to disable that behavior -- that is simply how the software
works.

And if a user works around your nasty, narrow-minded, and futile
attempts to create artificial scarcity, that is simply how free
citizens and free markets work. They see artificial scarcity as damage
and route around it.

That has nothing to do with the free market. The free market is about people
agreeing on terms and then adhering to them. If the terms of use of my
software are that I want it to stop working after a trial period, or when an
agreed upon license expires, you are at liberty to opt out. That's how free
markets and free citizens work.

If you agree to the terms of the license and then attempt to defeat the
agreement, then you are acting in bad faith, and I might be justified in
taking legal action against you.

That's how this kind of ridiculousness a) gets started and b)
escalates. The end result would obviously be to outlaw all competition
as "taking bread off some poor schmuck's (usually a multi-billion-
dollar corporation, mind) table", and after that, as history has
taught us, comes the secret police and the gulags and the complete
failure of innovation, industry, and eventually basic services,
leading to a massive collapse and breakup into kleptocratic fiefdoms
with loose nukes.

You have a very active imagination. Everything I have said so far has to do
with people acting on mutual agreements. If you don't like the model, then
don't participate.

If you had your way, by 2050 we'd have a bunch of ex-American
republics, with the People's Republic of New England at war with Free
California and the Dominion of Kansas caught in the middle. And global
black markets flooded with who knows what nasty things. Not to mention
a technological level not much more advanced than today's, with China
the world superpower with the highest standards of living and vastly
superior technology.

I do have my way part of the time, and I see nothing of the sort happening.
Everything I have described involves free will and voluntary participation.

Is that the world you want your grandkids to be born in?

I want my grandkids to be born into a much more capitalist world than we
have now.

 

[Chronic Philharmonic]

[snip]

NO FEEDBACK LOOPS!

What I write in response to Roedy is no skin off your nose.

Oh, I thought this was a discussion group. My bad.

It's ridiculous. You would perform extra work to make your product
artificially less functional than it otherwise would have been? How
perverse.


That is exactly what I do. I hardly ever pay for software these days,
only for ongoing services such as support. I mainly patronize FOSS
providers such as Mozilla.

Excellent. When my market share begins to decline, or market research
suggests a different approach, I might re-think my business model.

Sure you can. It's just stupid to do so, and not morally wrong for
someone else to undo your nasty bit of user-hostile programming.

Attempting to defeat the terms of an agreement you evidently must have made
to obtain the software in the first place *is* morally wrong, and may be
legally actionable.

Sure it is. A genuine feature provides added value to the end-user.
What you are discussing not only fails to do so, it actually REMOVES
value for the end-user. That is not a feature; it is a hole where a
feature used to be.

Feature == characteristic. It is a feature. Just one you don't happen to
like. Some users actually appreciate the reminder that they need to renew
their agreement. That is not a hypothetical, that comes from actual customer
feedback. Seriously.

Yep -- in case you somehow hadn't guessed or heard this before, the
fact that a copy of a piece of software does not intrinsically wear
out or break down from age is a feature, not a bug. So is the fact
that information can be reproduced at zero marginal cost, and without
the involvement of the originator of that information.

The software provides a service that has value. The fact that I can
duplicate it and distribute it at near-zero marginal cost has nothing to do
with my business model that reflects a return on my initial investment of
time and effort, and perhaps on-going support.

I already do avoid software that contains intentional bugs or
deliberately lacks features.

Totally your choice. That is precisely my point. You are exercising your
right by voting with your dollars.

And I'll be right there to tell you "I told you so".

No need. It is abundantly clear that the market might require me to take a
different approach. It happens all the time. I expect to respond to customer
input.

(P.S. judging by your behavior it looks like maybe you're a sockpuppet
of the thread's OP. Are you?)

Not at all. They can speak for themselves if they feel the need.

Irrelevant comments in Usenet posts are also apparently free.


There is a cost associated with spam, but it's incurred by the
recipient. The economics of spam closely resembles the economics of
air pollution, water pollution, and various other environmental no-
nos.

The economics of spam is also utterly irrelevant to the present
discussion.

The same near-zero duplication and distribution model applies here, and that
is what I was referring to.

That is *the* fairest way to robustly do what was described, and it's
not that dissimilar from the industry-standard way to fund R&D and
startups in, well, pretty much every other industry on earth.

I don't think you can objectively prove that it is *the* fairest way. There
is more than one way to skin a cat. I realize skinning cats is irrelevant to
this discussion too, and I retract that statement.

Already do, it and other business models that don't involve artificial
scarcity or infringements of my property rights.


That process has already begun. Hence my recommendation to the OP.

A century ago, I'd have been noticing Stanley steamers and very early-
model Fords putt-putting on the streets in small but growing numbers,
put two and two together, and advised people not to invest heavily in
buggy whip futures.

For exactly the same reasons as I made my recent recommendation to the
OP here.


Of course.

Say, is it just my imagination, or are several people here laboring
under the misapprehension that I advocated something other than the OP
choosing, of his or her own volition, a different and less user-
hostile business model?

No, and in fact, I probably would not implement that kind of feature for my
own projects, but the company I work for does, and I can see their reasons.
I don't see it as a black-and-white issue.

See above -- but it's not about what I want, it's about what is best
for the OP. Entering the buggy whip market while Ford is busy erecting
its second, larger assembly plant simply is not wise, and I decided to
point that out when I heard someone announcing their intentions to do
so.

Perhaps it was your phraseology that raised the hair on the back of my neck.
Rather than attacking the solution, simply pointing out that your escrow
model might be another solution to consider (along with a discussion of
possible advantages and disadvantages -- and I suspect there are some) might
have resulted in a more amicable discussion.

No, customers do not, as a rule, prefer their products to be less
useful than they otherwise might be, and especially prefer their
products not to have been deliberately sabotaged. Remember the
infamous exploding Pinto and other backfirings of "value engineering"
in the automotive industry, culminating in the domestic manufacturers
eventually losing enormous chunks of market share to Japanese
manufacturers?

Again, you are reading hostility into a mutual relationship. As long as both
parties enter into an agreement voluntarily, I see nothing wrong with any
approach. Nobody is being fooled, and everyone knows the terms of the
agreement. The software doesn't have to quit working without warning, or
cause any damage to user data. Now, that would be hostile, and I would not
support such an approach.

 

[reckoning54]

[excessive, unused quoted material deleted]

Learn to quote properly!

That has nothing to do with the free market.
Wrong.

The free market is about people agreeing on terms and then adhering
to them.

In your example, there was no "people agreeing on terms", only an
attempt by one party to unilaterally impose terms without negotiation.
Nothing remotely resembling legal contract formation had occurred.

If you agree to the terms of the license and then attempt to defeat the
agreement, then you are acting in bad faith

What if I simply never agree to the terms? What if I simply never sign
anything or promise verbally anything of the sort?

and I might be justified in taking legal action against you.

If you can produce your copy of a signed contract indicating my
agreement to some terms, along with forensic evidence that I violated
those terms subsequently, AND a court then finds the clause in
question to be enforceable (rather than, say, unconscionable), then
you MIGHT succeed in doing so.

Since I never intend to agree to any terms of yours or even use any
product of yours WITHOUT doing so, this is highly unlikely to ever
occur.

That's how this kind of ridiculousness a) gets started and b)
escalates. The end result would obviously be to outlaw all competition
as "taking bread off some poor schmuck's (usually a multi-billion-
dollar corporation, mind) table", and after that, as history has
taught us, comes the secret police and the gulags and the complete
failure of innovation, industry, and eventually basic services,
leading to a massive collapse and breakup into kleptocratic fiefdoms
with loose nukes.

[implied insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one.

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

Everything I have said so far has to do with people acting on mutual
agreements.

Nonsense. "Mutual agreements" requires a meeting of the minds and a
process of negotiation of some sort. You have not suggested doing
anything of the sort.

If you don't like the model, then don't participate.

I don't like the model*, and I don't participate.

* The one you apparently ACTUALLY use, which DOESN'T appear to involve
any negotiation.

I do have my way part of the time, and I see nothing of the sort happening.
Yet.

Everything I have described involves free will and voluntary participation.

Nonsense. You also rely on the government enforcement of restrictions
on other peoples' property rights and free speech rights that have
nothing to do with negotiated contracts of any sort.

I want my grandkids to be born into a much more capitalist world than we
have now.

Then I suggest you work to end the socialist abominations that are
copyright law and patent law, in particular. Or is welfare statism OK
in your eyes so long as it is CORPORATE welfare? Even though that's
the worst sort, destroying innovation and competitive markets and
replacing them with artificially elevated prices, stagnation, and the
inability to get much done without negotiating all kinds of "licenses"
and patent pools.

 

[reckoning54]

Oh, I thought this was a discussion group. My bad.

This is a JAVA discussion group. Once you are no longer discussing
Java, the rules change, and you should not post to the off-topic
thread except perhaps to respond directly if attacked.

[excessive, unused quoted material deleted]

Learn to quote properly!

Excellent. When my market share begins to decline, or market research
suggests a different approach, I might re-think my business model.

That's smarter than "I'll never turn to the light side!", but not as
smart as being more proactive and "getting in on the ground floor" so
to speak.

Attempting to defeat the terms of an agreement you evidently must have made
to obtain the software in the first place *is* morally wrong

But that is not the scenario under discussion. The scenario under
discussion involves a user downloading a file and running it without
any contact with you or with any organization that might have involved
signing something or coming to a verbal agreement not to do something.

A person can negotiate in bad faith with a human being or an
organization of same, but cannot negotiate at all, let alone in bad
faith, with a computer program such as your app's installer or the Web
server supplying the downloads!

Feature == characteristic.

No, feature (in a computer program) == a piece of user-desirable
functionality.

By your brain-dead definition, Microsoft software crashing all the
time is actually a feature, not a bug, because it is characteristic of
Microsoft software!

Some users actually appreciate the reminder that they need to renew
their agreement.

Perhaps they have Stockholm syndrome? Ordinary users would prefer that
a tool that they got just keep working for as long as the manufacturer
can engineer it to work, durability-wise.

I don't see the difference between supplying a copy of some software
that's rigged to break down prematurely and supplying, say, a power
drill that's rigged to conk out and be difficult to get working again
after a while, in both cases with the intent of getting your customer
to come back to buy a replacement sooner than might otherwise occur.

The smart customer, of course, goes to your main competitor to buy
their replacement instead, or just fixes the darn thing.

You'd certainly call the drill defective, even if there was something
in fine print in the little manual booklet that no-one actually reads
that said it is deliberately engineered to fail quickly.

I'd call both of them defective. Deliberately though it may be.

That is not a hypothetical, that comes from actual customer
feedback. Seriously.

There's one born every minute.
-- P. T. Barnum

The software provides a service that has value.

So does a power drill. But YOU are not providing an ongoing service if
the user simply gets a copy and then uses it repeatedly without
upgrading it or anything. YOU are only furnishing a product, the same
as if you furnished a power drill that they then used repeatedly.

The fact that I can duplicate it and distribute it at near-zero marginal
cost has nothing to do with my business model

It has everything to do with why your business model is unstable, even
when somewhat propped up by socialist legislation that stupidly allows
legal enforcement of artificial scarcity in such things.

A free market naturally drives down the cost of anything with
sufficient demand to its marginal cost of reproduction. Preventing
this natural evolution of the price curve is a Sisyphean task, as the
RIAA has discovered to its chagrin in recent years. It's also
completely unnecessary as somewhat savvier businesses have proven in
recent years.

that reflects a return on my initial investment of time and effort, and
perhaps on-going support.

I have no issues with your charging for on-going support, or for
copies of the software. I only have issues with your attempting to
unilaterally impose restrictions on what other people can do with your
products AFTER they get them, and I consider intentionally degrading a
product's usefulness to be just plain silly.

Totally your choice. That is precisely my point. You are exercising your
right by voting with your dollars.

The problem is that you seem to object to my also exercising my right
to free speech, as I am doing here in denouncing your choice of
business model and your attempts to coerce others. You have just seen
that by doing so you drive some potential customers away!

No need. It is abundantly clear that the market might require me to take a
different approach. It happens all the time. I expect to respond to customer
input.

Smarter than your average RIAA-type person, perhaps.

(P.S. judging by your behavior it looks like maybe you're a sockpuppet
of the thread's OP. Are you?)

[denies it]

Why, then, are you apparently describing the same software in the same
thread but attributing the software to yourself?

[more unused quoted material deleted]

Learn to quote properly!

The same near-zero duplication and distribution model applies here

So? It's still irrelevant. Unless you are now going to claim that free
software is spam? How ridiculous.

That is *the* fairest way to robustly do what was described, and it's
not that dissimilar from the industry-standard way to fund R&D and
startups in, well, pretty much every other industry on earth.

[calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar.

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

[more unused quoted material deleted]

Learn to quote properly!

No, and in fact, I probably would not implement that kind of feature for my
own projects, but the company I work for does, and I can see their reasons.
I don't see it as a black-and-white issue.

A guy on tonight's episode of Law and Order murdered his wife's
boyfriend. I can see his reasons. But he went to jail anyway.

The funny thing is that is IS a black-and-white issue. Copyright is
evil, and claiming that a unilaterally-imposed "agreement", often only
presented AFTER purchase of a product, is somehow legally binding is
downright fraudulent.

Perhaps it was your phraseology that raised the hair on the back of my neck.

Perhaps. But I cannot also ignore the moral dimension here. It is
clear that a business model that does not involve infringing on the
property rights of your customers is morally superior to, not only
smarter business than, one that does.

Again, you are reading hostility into a mutual relationship.

What "mutual relationship"? It's amazing what corporate shills
apparently delude themselves into believing. There is no "mutual
relationship" between a user that buys or downloads some software and
a manufacturer whose only contact with them is a pile of all-caps
legalese that the software's installer presents, and that (since it
was not agreed to IN ADVANCE of purchase, is not even legally binding
anyway).

As long as both parties enter into an agreement voluntarily, I see nothing
wrong with any approach.

Neither do I, but I cannot recall any instance of Joe User actually
negotiating and then verbally agreeing, or signing something, to the
effect that they will let some software stop working, with a copy only
given them after they have done so.

Maybe some big B2B transactions with lawyers involved on both sides,
and that's about it. No cases involving an ordinary Joe User.

 

[Chronic Philharmonic]

[excessive, unused quoted material deleted]

Learn to quote properly!

Sorry I broke your computer. I really need to re-read the Usenet quoting RFC
again. My bad.

Wrong.

Oh, that's different then.

In your example, there was no "people agreeing on terms", only an
attempt by one party to unilaterally impose terms without negotiation.
Nothing remotely resembling legal contract formation had occurred.


What if I simply never agree to the terms? What if I simply never sign
anything or promise verbally anything of the sort?

Then you don't want/get the software. No problem there.

and I might be justified in taking legal action against you.

If you can produce your copy of a signed contract indicating my
agreement to some terms, along with forensic evidence that I violated
those terms subsequently, AND a court then finds the clause in
question to be enforceable (rather than, say, unconscionable), then
you MIGHT succeed in doing so.
Exactly.

Since I never intend to agree to any terms of yours or even use any
product of yours WITHOUT doing so, this is highly unlikely to ever
occur.
Exactly.

One might say, by giving it away free, I am depriving some
other developer of income he needs to feed his family.

That's how this kind of ridiculousness a) gets started and b)
escalates. The end result would obviously be to outlaw all competition
as "taking bread off some poor schmuck's (usually a multi-billion-
dollar corporation, mind) table", and after that, as history has
taught us, comes the secret police and the gulags and the complete
failure of innovation, industry, and eventually basic services,
leading to a massive collapse and breakup into kleptocratic fiefdoms
with loose nukes.

[implied insult deleted]

Implied insult? Not even a real insult. It was an observation that I thought
your scenario was a bit over the top.

No, you're the crazy one.

Should I delete that? I mean, really... I'm insulted.

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

I don't think I said or implied anything nasty. I simply said that two
consenting parties ought to be able to agree on the terms of a license and
what the software will do under those terms. I also said, or implied that I
think your aversion to such an agreement is a bit extreme, since no one is
forcing you to comply.

Nonsense. "Mutual agreements" requires a meeting of the minds and a
process of negotiation of some sort. You have not suggested doing
anything of the sort.

I repeatedly said that both parties are at liberty to accept or opt out. I
did not provide a strict legal definition because I felt it was unnecessary
in an informal discussion. I really don't want to go there anyway.

I don't like the model*, and I don't participate.
Exactly.

* The one you apparently ACTUALLY use, which DOESN'T appear to involve
any negotiation.

It could involve anything from a statement above the download button, to an
email exchange which delivers the product by return email, to a signed and
notarized hard copy. I really think reasonable people can work it out. By
the way, if someone clicks "download" without agreeing to the terms, I
personally would probably shine it on. That agreement is pretty
unenforceable. If they managed to reverse-engineer the hypothetical timeout,
I probably would not worry too much about that, since most people would
probably abide by the admittedly informal agreement, and accept the
programmed EOL.

Yet.

Armageddon because some software stops working after the vendor and the
customer agreed that it would? That just doesn't seem likely. Sorry...

Nonsense. You also rely on the government enforcement of restrictions
on other peoples' property rights and free speech rights that have
nothing to do with negotiated contracts of any sort.


Then I suggest you work to end the socialist abominations that are
copyright law and patent law, in particular. Or is welfare statism OK
in your eyes so long as it is CORPORATE welfare? Even though that's
the worst sort, destroying innovation and competitive markets and
replacing them with artificially elevated prices, stagnation, and the
inability to get much done without negotiating all kinds of "licenses"
and patent pools.

I wasn't talking about copyright or patent law.

I keep coming back to a simple agreement between consenting adults about one
specific behavior of some software. If both parties cannot agree, there is
no agreement. If I can't find anyone to make such an agreement, then I'll be
compelled to change my design/business model. Free choice all around.

 

[reckoning54]

On Sep 23, 3:39 am, "Chronic Philharmonic" <[email protected]>
wrote:
[snip]

No. You are not supposed to write anything else for at least 24 hours.
You are only permitted one round of replies per day. Stop attacking
me.

Sorry

Apology accepted.

Wrong.

[nothing that seems relevant]
....

[unused quoted material deleted]

When you apologize for something, you are NOT supposed to commit the
same infraction again within five bloody minutes!

Trim. Your. Unused. Quoted. Material.

Then you don't want/get the software. No problem there.

That's different from most software sales then. Most software sales
just involve exchanging money for a copy, typically on a disc inside a
sealed box, without any explicit terms and conditions of the sale, so
only the implicit ones from that state's laws governing retail sales
would seem to apply.

If you, by contrast, are only providing copies to someone after they
have explicitly agreed, verbally or in writing, to particular terms of
use, then I don't see a problem here.

Exactly.

And if you can't produce such, for instance because no contract was
ever presented to, let alone signed by, me, then you're SOL.

That's how this kind of ridiculousness a) gets started and b)
escalates. The end result would obviously be to outlaw all competition
as "taking bread off some poor schmuck's (usually a multi-billion-
dollar corporation, mind) table", and after that, as history has
taught us, comes the secret police and the gulags and the complete
failure of innovation, industry, and eventually basic services,
leading to a massive collapse and breakup into kleptocratic fiefdoms
with loose nukes.
[implied insult deleted]

[calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar.

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

Should I delete that?

No, you should seek professional help.

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

[calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar.

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

consenting parties ought to be able to agree on the terms of a license

How often does this ever actually happen in consumer software sales,
or web-site downloads, though, really?

I also said, or implied that I
think your aversion to such an agreement is a bit extreme, since no one is
forcing you to comply.

My aversion is to attempts to force me to comply with something that
was NOT negotiated verbally or in writing with the manufacturer before
the download/sale. As I *thought* I had already adequately explained.

I repeatedly said that both parties are at liberty to accept or opt out.

In what? Not a normal software sale, at which the manufacturer or his
agent is not even present, and not in a typical download, in which
only the customer tends to be present.

Maybe you're thinking of B2B licensing negotiations rather than
consumer software use?

I did not provide a strict legal definition because I felt it was
unnecessary in an informal discussion.

It is necessary in any discussion of legal (and to some extent moral)
issues surrounding transactions.

I really don't want to go there anyway.

Fine; feel free to shut up or return to discussing Java in other
threads.

It could involve anything from a statement above the download button

That is not a negotiation and it sure as hell doesn't constitute a
legally binding contract.

if someone clicks "download" without agreeing to the terms, I
personally would probably shine it on. That agreement is pretty
unenforceable.

Certainly is. In fact, it doesn't even exist; agreement would be
sending something back to you saying "I agree".

If they managed to reverse-engineer the hypothetical timeout,
I probably would not worry too much about that, since most people would
probably abide by the admittedly informal agreement, and accept the
programmed EOL.

Well, there IS one born every minute...

Armageddon because some software stops working after the vendor and the
customer agreed that it would? That just doesn't seem likely. Sorry...

Nah, because the entire legal and political climate continues its
slide into socialism with policies that destroy innovation and destroy
private property rights, by granting vendors all kinds of powers to
regulate the post-sale use of their wares (now private individuals
have no property rights to speak of, only large businesses) and as a
result they can rake in so much money that they need not bother doing
any kind of innovation once they have a single hit product out there
-- that one product is the proverbial goose that lays the golden egg.

That world is not one that I would want to live in. And it has no
incentives to innovate at all. Incumbents with hit products can just
sit back and rake in money for work done years ago, without doing any
more WORK (aside from transaction processing, lobbying, and legal
actions, all of which they'll outsource), nobody will dare offer a
competing product (or half their own stuff will be remotely EOL'd by
the incumbent; plus the lawyers will go after them for violating a
noncompete clause some third-level grunt clicked past without noticing
while installing some trivial app on their laptop that's sometimes
used at work), and so forth.

[unused quoted material deleted]

Learn to quote properly!

I wasn't talking about copyright or patent law.

Well, I was.

I keep coming back to a simple agreement between consenting adults about one
specific behavior of some software.

But such agreements are exceedingly rare. Usually there is no
negotiation between customer and vendor at all, in retail software
purchases or website downloads.

 

[Chronic Philharmonic]

On Sep 23, 3:39 am, "Chronic Philharmonic" <[email protected]>
wrote:

[snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip]

No. You are not supposed to write anything else for at least 24 hours.
You are only permitted one round of replies per day. Stop attacking
me.

What attacks? I have been uncharacteristically mild by Usenet standards, and
characteristically mild by my own standards, thank me very much.

[snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip]

I just went back and re-read the OP's post, and he/she/it was asking how to
prevent system clock rollback on a 30 day trial period. Many of the
arguments on this thread have involved on-going payment cycles, which could
be arguable, depending on the kind of product or service it is. I think a 30
day trial period is quite justified. You get to use the software for free
and see if you like it. If not, it stops working, and you are free to
un-install it or leave it. The software hasn't changed; it's the same bits
you downloaded. It is still working as designed, so technically, it isn't
even broken. It just isn't useful to you anymore (if it ever was).

Presumably the web site where you got it said "30 day free trial" in big
letters, along with the asking price in big numbers. If you really were
taken by surprise (assuming it stopped without warning -- bad design), you
might call customer service, or revisit the web site and get your answer.
You could then decide whether to purchase the software or not. After the
purchase, if no other arrangements were made, you would "own" it, and the
software would continue to run normally indefinitely. I think the engineer
is entitled to a one-time payment for his time, effort and ingenuity,
regardless of, or in addition to, any distribution cost that may accrue.

As long as no coercion is involved, it seems like a perfectly capitalistic,
free market solution.

 

[reckoning54]

[implied insult deleted]

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

What attacks?

Unwelcome posts like this one!

[implied insult deleted]

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

I just went back and re-read the OP's post, and he/she/it was asking how to

sabotage his or her customers' property, yes, I know.

I think a 30 day trial period is quite justified.

I think a price much above marginal cost for something is not
justified. I think artificial scarcity is not justified. I think
intentionally degrading the performance of a product is stupid, not to
mention not justified. I think attempting to legislate post-sale use
of a product by consumers, and how a consumer can use his or her own
other property, is *dangerous* and unjustified.

You get to use the software for free

I really should get to anyway, given that my use of it costs nobody
else anything, since it is a non-rival good.

Presumably the web site where you got it said "30 day free trial" in big
letters, along with the asking price in big numbers.

If so, that would be a statement by the vendor (or whoever operates
the site), not an agreement by me to anything, and certainly not me
actually entering into a binding legal contract with the vendor.

After the purchase, if no other arrangements were made, you would "own" it

Eh -- if I ask for a file and someone (or their automated
representative) gives a copy to me in the form of a download, I own
that copy right then and there. (If on physical media, they might
reasonably be just lending it since while I have it they'd be missing
it, and I might then be obliged to return it after a while; but if I
made a copy while I had it, THAT copy would be mine.)

That is the only reasonable interpretation of natural property rights.

I think the engineer is entitled to a one-time payment for his time,
effort and ingenuity

Nobody is *entitled* to future sales, profits, or revenues -- what do
you think this is, a communist country? The engineer has the natural
right to ask for money in exchange for copies, but not the natural
right to stop someone else doing as they please with one of their
copies, including making more copies or tinkering with one to remove
limitations etc.; if the OP (or you) has somehow got a "right" to do
so, it is actually an unnatural, government-granted privilege and this
should be abhorrent to any genuine supporter of capitalism and free
market economics.

As long as no coercion is involved, it seems like a perfectly capitalistic,
free market solution.

The problem is any legalistic coercion to prevent people modifying,
redistributing, or reverse engineering the products they obtain.