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Comment by mistermann | Hacker News Reader

> If I have a copy of some information or software, and I can easily copy it to my friend, and my friend needs it, why should I deny him?

How about if you promised not to do that in your acceptance of the license agreement?

Your friends "need" isn't necessarily a valid claim on the fruits of the software authors labor. (A "need" for software? Come on.) It might make a very compelling argument that the author should choose to gift a copy to your friend, or offer an educational version (as many do), but I can't see the logic that a need is a valid claim, moral or otherwise, on someone else's work.

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Lets put this into concrete examples. Let say there is a kid who want to learn physics, and I got study software that the child needs. However, the license agreement say I can't. The child could maybe, in theory, reconstruct the necessary experiments or read about them in the library.

Or let say that a cab driver see a child who missed the buss back home. However, the cab drivers contract says he is not allowed to pick up passages who can't pay. Without the drive back home, the child need to walk several miles.

This is what people call moral dilemmas. To help a child, or to follow the contract.

You could buy a second copy of the software for the child. You saw enough value in it to consider letting them use it and you saw enough value to buy it for yourself. Either you consider the asking price fair for what it delivers or you don't. If you don't think it's a fair price then you can either write something yourself for them or spend your own time helping them learn.

There's no dilemma preventing you from helping the child.

So someone should go to university and study to become a programmer, and in several years into the future when the child has grown up, you might be able to reproduce the program? Could you provide a more straw'ish argument?

It is possible that you can spend money to buy a new copy, in the same way that the cab driver could "pay" his employer the drive the child home. However, anyone who sees the child could also spend the money for the cab. Is the argument here that they are all equally moral bankrupt when they child end up walking all those miles home? Does it matter that the cab driver was driving in that direction anyway?

Many people around the world can say that they are helping children to become the best they can be. Someone who refuse sharing can not. Which one are you?

> You could buy a second copy of the software for the child.

This is a “let them eat cake” response. All problems could be solved if one assumes endless resources.

Also, you are assuming the software is still for sale. Perhaps it never was on sale; perhaps it’s a student-only edition provided by an institution. The point is: There are two choices: Obey the restriction the owner has decided and deny your help, or help the child and break your promise to obey the restrictions.

> How about if you promised not to do that in your acceptance of the license agreement?

I could do that, and then the ethical burden would fall on me to motivate why society would benefit more from my use of the software than it would benefit everyone I would potentially deny to receive a copy of it.

But, the way you phrase it (“claim on the fruits of the software authors labor”) presupposes that it is property, and a rivalrous one at that. However, software is a non-rivalrous good, and whether it should be considered property is the question we are debating.

It's a club good (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_good).

A club good is simply an excludable non-rivalrous good. In this Internet age it is increasingly hard to maintain the illusion of the excludability of bits.

It is relatively effective. Most people don't pirate things because it's illegal. Especially corporations are less likely to pirate software because of the serious legal consequences.

Note that I said bits, not only software. Most everyone has their music collection. Also, in regards to software, show me an average person who hasn’t had a pirated version of, say, Photoshop or MS Office. Even in business office settings it is, I am given to understand, very common.

Also, does a mere legal barrier suffice to make something an excludable good? Could you turn, for example, the observing of the Statue of Liberty into an excludable good merely by passing a law mandating that only those allowed may observe it?

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