Plagiarist

Lindsay has been doing a lot of reading lately about plagiarism. It's a serious concern for artists I would imagine. Perhaps my views on software piracy relate here, people justify software theft by saying that it's just 1's and 0's on the Internet. Well a book is just ink stains on paper, should I be allowed to scan a best selling novel and sell it for my own profit? A painting is just pigment on a medium, can I copy Pablo Picasso's work and sell it as my own?

Computers are a strange beast. They contain so much stuff, but there's really nothing about that stuff which can be identified or differentiated from the computer its self. So when I install a program on my computer it essentially becomes a part of the defining characteristics of "my computer". This is why proprietary software companies deliver an End User License Agreement (EULA) with the software. Almost every EULA says essentially that you don't own the software that you've just purchased, you only have the right to use this software in a specific way.

That may be a part of the problem with Software and Piracy. EULA's aren't necessarily recognized as binding, and certainly not on a global level. I'm sure if the logistics could be sorted out we would have to sign a proper contract before buying any new programs for our computers. Software developers don't really have much in the way of legal protection yet for the tools that they work very hard to produce, so instead we get Digital Rights Management (DRM) and watchdog groups like the Business Software Alliance (BSA).

It's too bad that people think that they deserve something for nothing, but they do. Until a time when people can be trusted not to steal, there will always need to be people willing to help prevent theft and organizations that can help report it.