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[Joe Forster/STA]

Hi DABhand,

Difference in physical yes, but ideals are the same im sure you will agree.

IT IS EXACTLY THE IDEAS IN WHICH PHYSICAL OBJECTS AND SOFTWARE DIFFER FROM EACH OTHER! This is exactly why many organizations are against e.g. software patents: you shouldn't be able to copyright an algorithm, just like an idea that someone else can also come up with, without "stealing" it from you. It would be very sad if scientists couldn't base their ideas on the ideas of other scientists - the development of technology would slow down a lot! Similarly, software patents are against the development of technology and mankind in general.

You can own a physical object, you can take it into your hand. But you cannot own a piece of software, as you cannot take it into your hand. Although I definitely wonder what's going to happen when they do create the technology of Star Trek's replicator which would be able to copy physical objects _exactly_ - then will copyright holders be really f*cked!

Say your making a game, hypothetically, and it gets warezed heavily, are you going to have the same enthusiasm as the last game?

In many cases, the game publisher pays a FIXED AMOUNT of money to the game developer. Which means, the game developer doesn't care about how many copies of the game have actually been sold. The game publisher invested money into the development of the game; now they want to get that money back plus as much profit as it is possible.

As it has already been pointed out, the fact that a game gets warezed may also mean that people are interested in it and like it - in short, it is a good game! If you are the enthusiastic type of game developer, you could even say, "hey, they [they, the publishers; not we, the developers!] sold a hundred thousand copies and there's an estimation of another few million warezed copies, MAN, DOES OUR GAME RULE!" Okay, that's a bit unrealistic... [Edit] Still, you could wonder why Valve took the distribution of Half-Life 2 into its own hands, by letting pre-purchasing customers download the encrypted game files, instead of the usual way of releasing it via the publisher...!

Joe