Stealing: The double standard?

[ErikTheNorwegian]

I`m a lite amazed (and amused) , I thought this forum got intellectual people roaming its forums  and that they   would respect, understand a not at least value intellectual property!   

If you dont respect others intellectual propperty, how do you respect your selv as a intellctual beeing?     This is then a well defined oxymoron if you dont.. 


http://www.jquantlib.org/index.php/Understanding_Intellectual_Property

http://www.respectproject.org/main/property.php

http://books.google.no/books?hl=no&lr=&id=L2P3EHagf8cC&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=respect+intellectual+property&ots=foDUMARJB-&sig=Kl1QmQPxa67wTey5p8Hj5VYCOjM&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=respect%20intellectual%20property&f=false

[jucole]

My father-in-law used to work for some of big car manufacturers over the years;  he told me a story once of when the design engineers for one of those companies brought in a brand-new top of range competitors model; and then they proceeded to strip it to the bone in a matter of hours, in order to learn / steal what they could.

[HLA-27b]

I`m a lite amazed (and amused) , I thought this forum got intellectual people roaming its forums  and that they   would respect, understand a not at least value intellectual property!   

If you dont respect others intellectual propperty, how do you respect your selv as a intellctual beeing?     This is then a well defined oxymoron if you dont.. 

I am glad that this thread has a tone of amusement as well. It would have been very boring if all this was grim bickering. 

Now to address the points you raise, I maintain that "intellect" is a very real and tangible thing while "intellectual property" is not.
"Intellectual property" is a business scheme where the fruits of one's thoughts can be bought and sold as an item. This, however, inadvertently implies that the creator somehow has "exclusivity of thought". I.e. once the creator has thought of an idea, you are not free to think (or act on) the same thing any more. Those thoughts are now exclusive to the creator, you are not allowed!
This is obviously preposterous.

Here is a question that that I'd like to raise in turn:

Is the Theory of Special Relativity "intellectual property" ? Why? Or why not?

edit: spelling

[ErikTheNorwegian]

I`m a lite amazed (and amused) , I thought this forum got intellectual people roaming its forums  and that they   would respect, understand a not at least value intellectual property!   

If you dont respect others intellectual propperty, how do you respect your selv as a intellctual beeing?     This is then a well defined oxymoron if you dont.. 

I am glad that this thread has a tone of amusement as well. It would have been very boring if all this was grim bickering. 

Now to address the points you raise, I maintain that "intellect" is a very real and tangible thing while "intellectual property" is not.
"Intellectual property" is a business scheme where the fruits of one's thoughts can be bought and sold as an item. This, however, inadvertently implies that the creator somehow has "exclusivity of thought". I.e. once the creator has thought of an idea, you are not free to think (or act on) the same thing any more. Those thoughts are now exclusive to the creator, you are not allowed!
This is obviously preposterous.

Here is a question that that I'd like to raise in turn:

Is the Theory of Special Relativity "intellectual property" ? Why? Or why not?

edit: spelling

"fruits of one's thoughts can be bought and sold as an item"

You both dont understand and give the answer in your own posting! So give it some thought.. you will get it, im shure of that.. Think copyright and down that way..

"Is the Theory of Special Relativity "intellectual property" ? Why? Or why not?" In print, its copyrihgted and cant be reprint/copied without permit or pay.. so yes, but it was  a theory and  was not proven at that point of printing.

[AndyC_772]

You might be surprised, then. ECU mapping is absolutely commonplace and there are plenty of well equipped, reputable companies who do it. The benefits of a mapped ECU can include better MPG, more power, improved smoothness and lower CO2 emissions - and all the more so if the map is refined specifically for the engine it will be used with rather than a generic off-the-shelf one.

does it impact guarantee when the motor blows up for some -unrelated - reason?

Absolutely it does, yes!

You might argue that it shouldn't, but in reality it's virtually impossible to prove that a modification you made wasn't the cause of the failure.

I design things for people every day, and if they go wrong then I find out why and fix them. If, however, someone took one of my designs, modified it (which they're entirely at liberty to do) and *then* complained to me that it wasn't working any more, I might be inclined to be less cooperative.

Once you start modifying something, you do accept a degree of responsibility for it. You shouldn't modify if you don't know what you're doing and aren't prepared to take the risk that you might break it.

[HLA-27b]

"fruits of one's thoughts can be bought and sold as an item"

You both dont understand and give the answer in your own posting! So give it some thought.. you will get it, im shure of that.. Think copyright and down that way..

"Is the Theory of Special Relativity "intellectual property" ? Why? Or why not?" In print, its copyrihgted and cant be reprint/copied without permit or pay.. so yes, but it was  a theory and  was not proven at that point of printing.

Oh, I understand alright 
The only problem is that my understanding does not vindicate intellectual property nor copyright in any way.
I do not dispute that people use their intellects (among other things) to create beautiful and useful things. This is wonderful and people deserve to earn money as well as respect for that.
What I am disputing is the role that the "intellectual property" has to play in all of that. As I said before, "intellectual property" is a coined name for a business scheme where a company like a publisher or a record company wants to make profit out of somebody's creative work. In order to do this a company needs three things: to convince everybody that the work is an "item of trade", to claim ownership of the work and to claim exclusivity of trade rights. These three things are what you and I have been trained to call "intellectual property"

I happen to dispute all of these three things. What I maintain is this:
1- The author is always the sole owner of his own work while he has no rights over anybody else's work.
2 - Creative work is non transferable to another party, not by trade, not by theft and not by inheritance or any other way. When the author passes away his work becomes public property.
3 - Exclusivity of trade rights (i.e. monopoly) has been granted granted to various parties by governments in the past but it has always done more harm than good. Best to avoid exclusivity.



About Einstein,
let's leave to one side the fact that the theory was not tested at time of publishing. This is irrelevant. Hell novels aren't even real and are still copyrighted

The important point is that the text of the Einstein's work was copyrighted by the publishing company while the real intellectual work (i.e. the theory itself) was not. This was a common practice at the time and we just began to rectify the problem thanks to things like Open Publishing and Open Journals.

[saturation]

This recently was posted.  As background, Microsoft announced in the past 4 months that new purchases of its 2013 Office Suite, actually licenses, would not be transferable once installed in a specific PC.  However, so many complained they changed this policy:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57572795-75/office-2013-licenses-can-now-be-transferred-to-another-pc/

The same flexibility can occur with any sales, including the release of added functionality say, in Agilent's new DSOs.  Buyers can simply walk away if  not satisfied with what constitutes 'ownership' or licensee as the case will be.

I for one, dissatisfied with those licenses, no longer use Microsoft's Office Suite, but  moved to Open Office > 6+ yrs ago.
 

[ErikTheNorwegian]

"fruits of one's thoughts can be bought and sold as an item"

You both dont understand and give the answer in your own posting! So give it some thought.. you will get it, im shure of that.. Think copyright and down that way..

"Is the Theory of Special Relativity "intellectual property" ? Why? Or why not?" In print, its copyrihgted and cant be reprint/copied without permit or pay.. so yes, but it was  a theory and  was not proven at that point of printing.

Oh, I understand alright 
The only problem is that my understanding does not vindicate intellectual property nor copyright in any way.
I do not dispute that people use their intellects (among other things) to create beautiful and useful things. This is wonderful and people deserve to earn money as well as respect for that.
What I am disputing is the role that the "intellectual property" has to play in all of that. As I said before, "intellectual property" is a coined name for a business scheme where a company like a publisher or a record company wants to make profit out of somebody's creative work. In order to do this a company needs three things: to convince everybody that the work is an "item of trade", to claim ownership of the work and to claim exclusivity of trade rights. These three things are what you and I have been trained to call "intellectual property"

I happen to dispute all of these three things. What I maintain is this:
1- The author is always the sole owner of his own work while he has no rights over anybody else's work.
2 - Creative work is non transferable to another party, not by trade, not by theft and not by inheritance or any other way. When the author passes away his work becomes public property.
3 - Exclusivity of trade rights (i.e. monopoly) has been granted granted to various parties by governments in the past but it has always done more harm than good. Best to avoid exclusivity.



About Einstein,
let's leave to one side the fact that the theory was not tested at time of publishing. This is irrelevant. Hell novels aren't even real and are still copyrighted

The important point is that the text of the Einstein's work was copyrighted by the publishing company while the real intellectual work (i.e. the theory itself) was not. This was a common practice at the time and we just began to rectify the problem thanks to things like Open Publishing and Open Journals.

"The only problem is that my understanding does not vindicate intellectual property nor copyright in any way."

Well, thats where you are in lack of "training" and understanding, knowledge, simply read and get some more intellectual  knowledge..
Its a pretty "communist" and anarcistic way of lack of and respect for intellectual ownership , transfer of such you show here . Not at least the way of normal business is handled. 
Distribution of those rights is a way of the value chain out to the consumer. By giving more people a way of living by giving moe people more to trade.  Its not that hard to grasp, is it??

I`m just curius, how old are you? (I`m 52 .. )

[mamalala]

Its a pretty "communist" and anarcistic way of lack of and respect for intellectual ownership , transfer of such you show here . Not at least the way of normal business is handled. 
Distribution of those rights is a way of the value chain out to the consumer. By giving more people a way of living by giving moe people more to trade.  Its not that hard to grasp, is it??

The problem is the stark contrast between how things are supposed to be "in the spirit of the law", and how they are used/treated in reality. If there is a thing like intellectual property, it can only really be the property of the one who actually used her/his intellectual power to come up with it. And it can not be exclusive to that person either, since others would come up with the same idea. In  reality, however, that "property" usually belongs to the company that the creator works for, at least that is how it is usually handled.

It's funny to see how people who criticize the current situation are rather quickly accused of having communist and/or anarchistic viewpoints. Just because something is the current status quo does not mean that it is right, in the grand scheme of things.

The next big difference is in patents, especially software patents. While the original idea was to grant some time-limited monopoly right (and thus protection) to the inventor, it is nowdays mostly used as a weapon against competitors. Just look at the abysmal quality of software patents. They are nothing more than a perversion of what patents (and the patent system) should be. Gross overgeneralizations, no details about the implementation, etc. Compare them to hardware/electronics patents, and the difference is shocking.

It continues with the IP rights in the media industry, which are nothing short of abusing customers nowdays. Then, just look at the agreements that software companies want to use. More often than not they contain gross violations of (not only) consumer protection laws.

Don't get me wrong. If someone comes up with something, that person should profit from it. But the way things are handled nowdays is totally out of control. Thanks to the lobbying power and money that corporations can spend on influencing politics.

Also, speaking of "fairness", a word that came up in this thread regarding the general topic, take a look at this video:

http://www.upworthy.com/9-out-of-10-americans-are-completely-wrong-about-this-mind-blowing-fact-2

I'm pretty sure that the situation is not that much different in other "western/civilized" countries. One has to wonder how it came to that point, and stuff like IP laws play quite some role in that, i think. Also, fairness and ethics (or better: lack thereof when it comes to corporations) are a big factor in this.

Greetings,

Chris

[HLA-27b]

Well, thats where you are in lack of "training" and understanding...

I'm not going to respond to ad hominem slander, with due respect.

If you have any good arguments pro intellectual property let's have those instead. I'm not  inconvincible but you are not really trying. 

Why should I have respect for intellectual property (which is different to creative work btw.) ? Do tell.
Why is it that the links that you gave seem to avoid mentioning scientific research? Because it is not intellectual?


Good response by marmala btw. I stand by that.

[mamalala]

Oh, and lets not forget the issue of research, either in universities or otherwise, that is sponsored by tax dollars only to have the outcome patented and commercially exploited by privately owned companies.

And lets also not forget that companies themselves do not always play fair either. The example of hacking a scope to gain more bandwidth is actually a really good one. If you complain that it would be unfair, or even theft, to hack the firmware to enable the higher bandwidth, then what do you have to say about low-spec ADC's used in those scopes, massively overclocked, to reach the sample rate? If they would be fair, shouldn't they instead use chips that actually have the required performance specs without overclocking them?

Each coin has two sides... Respect is nothing that is granted by default, it has to be earned instead. If corporations want to be respected by the public, then the onus is on them to start respecting these people again. That starts by how they treat their workers, and ends at how they treat their customers.

I'm with Dave here. Civil disobedience is what can change things. Laws and regulation ought to reflect what the people want, not what corporations can implement through lobbying and bags full of money. Todays laws are heavily skewed in favour of corporations. It's time that this changes.

Greetings,

Chris

[jerry507]

Firmware takes a lot of time to develop too. Just because it's not physical doesn't mean it's somehow just automatically free, unless you sell software that takes no time (and cost) to develop.

To some extent I agree with Mike, if your company is too dumb to implement even the most basic protections then you can't get too upset. But it's still stealing.

[mamalala]

Firmware takes a lot of time to develop too. Just because it's not physical doesn't mean it's somehow just automatically free, unless you sell software that takes no time (and cost) to develop.

To some extent I agree with Mike, if your company is too dumb to implement even the most basic protections then you can't get too upset. But it's still stealing.

Well, no one stops them from distributing firmware version that include only the functions that the product is supposed to have. They can easily put a fixed firmware on, for example, those scopes, since there is no official upgrade path anyways. Of course that would mean a bit more work for them. They want to avoid that to maximize profits, so they chose the easy way out.

They could distribute the options as seperate files/drivers that would in turn be uploaded to the scope, encrypted. That would block people from hacking these options. But again, they chose the easy way and included everything in one firmware blob, waiting to be hacked.

Heck, as far as the bandwidth issue is concerned, they even have the same circuitry for all these scopes, so the bandwidth is already there, physically. Just to save a few bucks on production instead of having a few components to be different for each bandwidth version.

So, they must live with the consequences. Obviously it is still more profitable to go this route, and have people hack their scopes, instead of having dedicated firmware versions and/or hardware versions. If it would be otherwise they would have changed all that long ago.

Greetings,

Chris

[nanofrog]

Oh, and lets not forget the issue of research, either in universities or otherwise, that is sponsored by tax dollars only to have the outcome patented and commercially exploited by privately owned companies.

And lets also not forget that companies themselves do not always play fair either. The example of hacking a scope to gain more bandwidth is actually a really good one. If you complain that it would be unfair, or even theft, to hack the firmware to enable the higher bandwidth, then what do you have to say about low-spec ADC's used in those scopes, massively overclocked, to reach the sample rate? If they would be fair, shouldn't they instead use chips that actually have the required performance specs without overclocking them?

Each coin has two sides... Respect is nothing that is granted by default, it has to be earned instead. If corporations want to be respected by the public, then the onus is on them to start respecting these people again. That starts by how they treat their workers, and ends at how they treat their customers.

I'm with Dave here. Civil disobedience is what can change things. Laws and regulation ought to reflect what the people want, not what corporations can implement through lobbying and bags full of money. Todays laws are heavily skewed in favour of corporations. It's time that this changes.

From what I've been noticing, I have to agree with this.

[free_electron]

Unless you fundamentally believe in the concept of owning the hardware product you buy, and you should be allowed to do anything you want with it.

i do believe in owning the things you buy, but turning on a feature you did not pay for still does not fly under that concept.

If my scope has the capability to do serial decoding but i need to pay for that 'option' ( even if it is activated by a key and the actual software/hardware is already built in but disabled ) that is perfectly fine. to me that is no different than buying an active probe for the machine. once i have that key the scope gets new capabilities. just like it does when i buy an active or differential probe for it. that key may be only a string of characters but i see it as a tool i can add to an existing machine and don;t have to buy something completely different for.

the machine can grow as my needs grow. it saves me money short term ( i don't pay for what i don't need now) and long term ( i pay only the delta as opposed to a whole new machine ) when upgrade day comes.

That key is simply a missing piece of code.

Let's assume that this is how the key works : the scope has the software built in but the function pointer that calls it is now point nowhere. that area in the flash rom is empty and simply points to nothing.
by entering the key a small program is run that calculates , based on the key and the serial number of the scope the correct call address and alters that in the rom. there you go. you now have different firmware , even if only by a few bytes , than a scope that does not have this capability. self calculating that thing and 'hacking it' is stealing.

microsoft office cd roms hold all the software. it's the licence key that determines what is installed and enabled ...
same for windows.

if you are doing thus for hobby ... mey. but if you are doing this to a machine used to make money off ... you deserve to get hit on the head. The investment in designing this thing is so large that they need to recup the costs somehow. i'm perfectly fine paying for an extra screwdriver.

[David_AVD]

There sadly seem to be a lot of ignorance of the actual time and money that software takes to develop, market and support.  I'm guessing that the "pro piracy" people have never developed any meaningful software.  If they had, they wouldn't be talking such rubbish.

[Lightages]

Really..... How is modifying a DS1052 to DS1102 any different than changing some capacitors in the story I told earlier? If you think that removing a few capacitors to remove an artificial frequency response is stealing, then I don't know what to say. Manufacturers making the software the limitation and then paying politicians to make it a law that you can't play with the software is against my rights IMHO. I have the right to do whatever I want for what I pay for. Just because corporations line the pockets of politicians doesn't make that change to legal rights moral. Laws have been made and abused many times to take the rights away from people. Civil disobedience is how laws sometimes get reversed.

[akcoder]

Then you can argue about whether you own or license software or firmware that you paid money for.

Yes, that was one of the answers I prepared for all the "If it is mine" voters, but that could start another discussion: Do you feel you 'own' the software when actually you only have a license to use it. Anyway, going off-topic myself now...

I've been a software engineer for the past 14 years, the last 7 working on a commercial product. Its my belief that software is owned, not licensed. Licenses can be revoked, and I have fundamental problems with revoking someones right to use software they have purchased.

I also firmly believe that all forms of software activation are not only a pain for the end user, but ultimately only end up hurting people who legally purchased the software.

-dan

[PeteInTexas]

Stealing is wrong and so is the notion of owning non-physical things.

[jancumps]

Stealing is wrong and so is the notion of owning non-physical things.

You own a cd and you don't own an mp3?

[PeteInTexas]

Let's assume that this is how the key works : the scope has the software built in but the function pointer that calls it is now point nowhere. that area in the flash rom is empty and simply points to nothing.
by entering the key a small program is run that calculates , based on the key and the serial number of the scope the correct call address and alters that in the rom. there you go. you now have different firmware , even if only by a few bytes , than a scope that does not have this capability. self calculating that thing and 'hacking it' is stealing.

Looks like the buyer already paid for the feature because it shipped with the product and therefore has every right to do what they wish with it, including "self calculate" activation.  The seller is not economically disadvantaged by this because the feature was already paid for.  In fact, it is the buyer who is economically disadvantage because, in addition to having paid good money for it, now has to spend effort "calculating" activation of it.

If a buyer is not supposed to have a feature, DON'T SHIP IT WITH THE PRODUCT!

[PeteInTexas]

Stealing is wrong and so is the notion of owning non-physical things.

You own a cd and you don't own an mp3?

yes

[jerry507]

If you buy a book, should you be free to copy everything out of it and hand it out to people? You bought it the hardware, you can do whatever you want with it. Maybe that makes sense to you, but it doesn't to me. Take the time to think about the exact same situation in a different area, if you can rationalize it in both places then we have a fundamental disagreement. If not, you've simply convinced yourself of something regardless of logic and reason.

[uprightsquire]

If you buy a book, should you be free to copy everything out of it and hand it out to people? You bought it the hardware, you can do whatever you want with it. Maybe that makes sense to you, but it doesn't to me. Take the time to think about the exact same situation in a different area, if you can rationalize it in both places then we have a fundamental disagreement. If not, you've simply convinced yourself of something regardless of logic and reason.

No, but I would say you should be free to re-bind the paperback as a hard-cover.

[JuKu]

Really..... How is modifying a DS1052 to DS1102 any different than changing some capacitors in the story I told earlier? If you think that removing a few capacitors to remove an artificial frequency response is stealing, then I don't know what to say.

I do believe it is wrong to steal the software from a better model and get something you didn't pay for. Similarly, it is wrong to change jumpers or put in a solder blob to enable features you didn't pay for. On the other hand, putting in a new pre-amp to increase bandwidth (or lower noise) is just fine, as long as the new design is not stolen. The gray area where a modification is or is not riding on manufacturer's R&D costs. In your example, the manufacturer used R&D money to develop a high bandwidth product and modified that to adapt to the current market situation by putting in an "artificial" limitation. By removing the limitation, you stole some of that R&D money.

I have the right to do whatever I want for what I pay for.

No, you don't. This is the fundamental misunderstanding or difference in opinion here. Of course, you must respect the intellectual property in the product. You can't copy a book, you can't re-label a product and re-sell it as yours etc. But this goes further: When you pay for something, you enter in an agreement with the manufacturer. This is how economy works. Manufacturer offers models 100 and 200. You agree to the offer for model 100, but not for model 200. When you bought model 100, you agreed with the manufacturer not to buy model 200. Morally, you don't have the right to change your model 100 to a model 200, even though you might know how.

Please note, that the law in your country has nothing to do with this. The laws are for people without their own moral anyway. How easy or difficult this is is irrelevant also. The manufacturer might be stupid in trusting their customers to honor the agreements or even relying that the customers understand the fundamental economic agreement and get hurt. That is a cost of business that should not be there, but that's how it is.

The Internet where distributing bits is easy and practically free might change the economy to different fundamental agreements, but we are not there yet.