Stealing: The double standard?

[EEVblog]

Changing the subject a little, I have trouble seeing what Agilent gain from selling a crippled version of their multimeter as noted elsewhere.
To produce the other version they have to design and produce a case with different graphics.
They have to insert code in the ROM to switch features on and off.
They have more testing to do to make sure both ROM versions work.
They have to split production into two separate streams to produce two versions of the product.
Their overall design, manufacturing, test and QA costs go up.
For this they get to sell a product for less money.
So it costs them more to sell for less. How can it possibly make business sense to do this?

a) it gives the user choice (users like choice, it's a psychological thing, they know this)
b) it gives the sales guys something to sell, compare, and haggle with ("We'll upgrade you to model X for free" etc)

You can bet it makes business sense for them to do so.

Dave.

[baljemmett]

Changing the subject a little, I have trouble seeing what Agilent gain from selling a crippled version of their multimeter as noted elsewhere.
[...]
So it costs them more to sell for less. How can it possibly make business sense to do this?

Market segmentation could be one applicable theory.  That might make sense if they believe they might be able to sell to more people at the lower price -- those who would buy the full thing at full whack, and those for whom the full thing is a little pricey, thanks, but here's one with a few bits you don't need missing but the price is much more appealing.  Crucially, a lot of those who were happy to pay full whack will probably still be willing to do so, because there's some extra feature they want or because it's not their money or whatever.  As long as the extra moolah coming in outweighs their cost in segmenting their buyers, they win.

This is a concept which always reminds me of  a fun article by Joel Spolsky, if only because of the portrait of Augustin Cournot.  He's coming at it from the point of view of software sales, but also touches on other markets as well as covering why this sort of thing annoys people:

And God help you if an A-list blogger finds out that your premium printer is identical to the cheap printer, with the speed inhibitor turned off.

... and on the other hand Agilent are currently (or were recently) chucking free U1272As in with any E36xx PSUs, even the models of the latter that only cost £5 more than the former would have, so who knows.  They may be very smart, or they may just be overly generous

[mikeselectricstuff]

If you download P-CAD without paying for it, you are stealing it.

No, you're not. You may be illegally acquiring it, but that does not make it stealing. Just like how smuggling it past customs is not stealing, or using a patented technology without paying royalties, or circumventing protection against running unauthorized software on your consumer electronics widget.

That's an interesting example, as you cannot buy P-Cad - Altium will not take your money.
I originally bought what was then ACCEL, and became P-CAD, and paid a few maintainance fees to upgrade over the years. Shortly after they discontinued it I wanted to upgrade to remove the 400 component limit and was willing to pay for it. They would not take my money. I therefore feel no guilt whatsoever that it took me 30 secs to find a full-version license key on the net to remove the limit. If companies behave like that, screw them.

[VEGETA]

"If companies behave like that, screw them. "

That's my man!!! good job.

I personally think that Apple deserves to be treated like that.

[mikeselectricstuff]

IANAL but I've always thought that the whole basis of click-through licenses is fundamentally flawed, as nobody would usually be able to prove who clicked 'I Agree".

In the case of stuff like test gear, I think there are two distinct situations
1) Deliberate crippling of hardware - bandwidth limitation or memory limits
2) Additional features, e.g. serial decode.
(2) is more like the case with  software, although would need some sort of EULA to make it enforceable (which I've never seen)
 However I can see no moral or legal argument against circumventing case (1) as there is no additional software involved, in fact by defeating the limits you could even argue that you are using less software functionality as you are no longer using the part of the SW that imposes the limits!

[VEGETA]

But how do you get Altium Designer for free? because you are a university student?

If I'm a student but I'm not in your specific university, can I get it? or every university differ?

sorry for that many questions.

-------

I noticed few pirated copies of Altium Designer 10 in the net but after 10 no any copy... maybe Altium people found a way to stop it.

Is there any much difference between 10 and 2013?

seriously, who can afford a 7000$ software? ^____^

[jucole]

My opinion is that hardware hacking is fair game because as already mentioned,  you have already bought the item;  but it wouldn't hurt hardware manufacturers to make generic products open,  customizable and extendable, rather than closed and too easily disposable or un-repairable.

Software is a little more tricky for me;  but if you are a student and need to get up to speed on the leading industry software, then that's ok in my book;  But it's a completely different story if you're making money through using ripped-off software.

With regard to music piracy;  I have no respect for the Music industry because they have wasted so much money and helped destroy so many great musicians over the years.

How many EE do you know that burn their wages?

On 23 August 1994, in which the K Foundation burned cash in the amount of one million pounds sterling on the Scottish island of Jura. This money represented the bulk of the K Foundation's funds, earned by Drummond and Cauty as The KLF, one of the United Kingdom's most successful pop groups of the early 1990s.

[digsys]

Long time ago, CANON tried to take a Company I worked for and I to court for repairing their equipment. Their argument was -
They have a professional standard to maintain and unskilled / unqualified service would degrade that. Naturally, you had to sell
an organ or small child to pay for the cr@p service, but they didn't mention that. The judge couldn't believe it and threw it out !
AFAIC, if the "rules" are FAIR, I play fair. Sadly, so many companies use the "legal" system as a weapon for unscrupulous gain.

[Spikee]

But how do you get Altium Designer for free? because you are a university student?

If I'm a student but I'm not in your specific university, can I get it? or every university differ?

sorry for that many questions.

-------

I noticed few pirated copies of Altium Designer 10 in the net but after 10 no any copy... maybe Altium people found a way to stop it.

Is there any much difference between 10 and 2013?

seriously, who can afford a 7000$ software? ^____^

My college has a license server for 50 people. I have never experienced it being full or anything. As a college / uni you can get a licence server for like 1000 usd / year for x amount of people ? ... But yeah
We still roll on the 10 version because i'm pretty sure we don't get the updates. Maybe if i can find a copy of the latest version i can test if it allows our license.

[bradleytron]

The fundamental problem is it is not really fair to sell copies of software.
Copy costs nothing to make and has no value.
Nobody deserves money for doing nothing.
The value is in actually creating the first original of the software and that is what should be paid for!
We need ways to pay programmers to work on open source, free software.
Until the sale of digital copy fallacy is eliminated, there can be no peace!

True, and I think that the model for software development and sales is akin to that which was in the music industry for so many years, i.e., the company owners take the lions share of the profit while the programmers do the actual work but only get the crumbs.

[bradleytron]

As someone who has spent a fair proportion of their life making  a living from writing software, I always pay for the software that I use.

Just about everyone else I know of has a cracked version of Sony Vegas to do their video editing -- mine's bought and paid for.

Lots of folk have illegally downloaded their favourite movies from the Net -- mine are store-bought disks.

Sure, I have some music that's been downloaded from the Net -- but that's only because when I couldn't find anyone who actually stocked the albums concerned so I *couldn't* buy them.

Also, sometimes I might watch a movie from YouTube by downloading and burning to a DVD or a USB drive -- but if I like the movie, I go out and buy the disk legitimately.  That's exactly what I did with Iron Sky.

As for hardware mods however, well I figure that if someone buys a piece of hardware I'm selling and then "improves it", good on them!  With the Rigol 1052 then I see no issue with "upgrading" it to the 100MHz version.   If I were selling a piece of hardware that relied on keycodes to unlock firmware functionality I might kick myself if someone figured out the upgrade process but I would consider it "my bad" that they were able to do that.

Using pirated software isn't theft of software but it sometimes does deprive the rightful owner of the intellectual property of their justly deserved revenues.

And there's no point in suggesting that the software vendors "make too much money anyway" so it's okay to deprive them of revenues.  If they're smart enough to create something that people will buy at the listed price then good for them!  If you think it's too expensive then just try writing your own version and selling it in competition.  You might find that the price isn't really that bad after all.

"Using pirated software isn't theft of software but it sometimes does deprive the rightful owner of the intellectual property of their justly deserved revenues."

This is the common claim that always gets me. I am yet to know of any actual examples where there is universal agreement on what constitutes "justly deserved revenues" and what qualifies as "intellectual property", software or otherwise. If you develop any bit of software, or anything for that matter, I assure you that somewhere in it are replications of other people's work, those who came before you, those from whom you learned the craft of programming, so how do you account for these contributions, how are these folks compensated with their justly deserved revenues? If, as the programmer/software designer, you only get a tinny fraction of the total revenue's, how is it then fare to talk about "intellectual property" and "justly deserved revenues" when some unspecified group of "share" holders and CEO's are getting most of the benefit? BTW I'm not trying to attack you here, I'm just expressing my rage against the machine! How little we understand the distribution of profit in these complex market systems.

[NiHaoMike]

So it's wrong to buy a car without GPS navigation (a $2000 option) and then install a Nexus 7 ($200) on the dash? Or to take a 3.2GHz CPU and "overclock" it to 3.8GHz by tweaking the BIOS? Those are examples analogous to unlocking features or boosting performance.

Ironically, DRM actually promotes piracy by making the pirate copies better than the legitimate copies. It's quite ineffective at actually stopping pirates (especially for audio and video) but it does restrict legitimate users.

I think that the user should be able to use and hack purchased hardware and software as much as he or she likes, but no unauthorized distribution of software.

Interesting situation: Let's assume downloading music off the web is illegal. But it's legal to listen to music on the radio and even record it to tape for personal use. Does the situation change any if you replace the radio with a web radio and the tape recorder with recording software? The end result is exactly the same as if you downloaded the music off the web.

[IanB]

That's an interesting example, as you cannot buy P-Cad - Altium will not take your money.
I originally bought what was then ACCEL, and became P-CAD, and paid a few maintainance fees to upgrade over the years. Shortly after they discontinued it I wanted to upgrade to remove the 400 component limit and was willing to pay for it. They would not take my money. I therefore feel no guilt whatsoever that it took me 30 secs to find a full-version license key on the net to remove the limit. If companies behave like that, screw them.

That's one of the golden rules of copyright. If they refuse your money when you try to pay, you can't be guilty of failing to pay for something. Copyright is designed to protect commercial interests. If you demonstrate no commercial interest, you have no right to copyright protection.

[David_AVD]

So it's wrong to buy a car without GPS navigation (a $2000 option) and then install a Nexus 7 ($200) on the dash?

Of course not.  You took one part of the car out and replaced it with another.  That's in no way relevant to unlocking features.

[EEVblog]

But how do you get Altium Designer for free? because you are a university student?

Either the university bought X number of educational licenses, or Altium provided them to the university for free, they sometimes do this, as do many other companies.

If I'm a student but I'm not in your specific university, can I get it? or every university differ?

Yes, every university if different.
You can get a personal student license (pay for, but cheap)

Dave.

[David_AVD]

If you develop any bit of software, or anything for that matter, I assure you that somewhere in it are replications of other people's work, those who came before you, those from whom you learned the craft of programming, so how do you account for these contributions, how are these folks compensated with their justly deserved revenues? If, as the programmer/software designer, you only get a tinny fraction of the total revenue's, how is it then fare to talk about "intellectual property" and "justly deserved revenues" when some unspecified group of "share" holders and CEO's are getting most of the benefit?

Software programmers use 3rd party components and libraries frequently.  A lot of them cost money.  I know I've bought component sets, icons, etc and used them to develop software for sale.  Those 3rd party suppliers got paid by the software developers (before one copy was even sold), so why shouldn't the software developers get paid too?

Software companies have costs too.  I'm guessing that a lot of people have no idea of how much work goes into writing, testing and debugging a piece of software.  In the case of big software companies, why aren't their shareholders entitled to make money from selling the software?  They are the ones that stumped up the money (in advance) after all.

[Rick Law]

My opinion is that hardware hacking is fair game because as already mentioned,  you have already bought the item; 

At the risk of offending the original author by trashing the example he used…  (sorry, hope you don’t mind)  I think the discussion gone off to a bad start because of the bad example of using “trial software” and hack to disable the time limit.

Let me propose two different examples that is “pure” hacking something you “own”:

(Example 1)

Many software packages such as Windows NT, control the feature availability using configuration data.   For example, NT workstation limits the user to 5 IP session (or there about, I forgot the exact number) whereas NT server has no IP session limit.  The same for “number of shares” and “number of opened files”: in NT workstation you can’t have so many open files whereas NT Server has no open-file limit (or much larger limit – been too long, I forgot).

So, you can purchase NT workstation ($100-ish at the time), hack the registry and end up having most of the capability of NT Server ($700-$1000’ish at the time).  You don’t get the add-on stuff like DNS server, DHCP server, IIS but you are not using them anyhow. You can cheat Microsoft by buying an NT workstation, hack it and run it as a departmental file server with as much serving capability as the NT server.
 
This hacking does not involve “stealing anything I do not already own”.  You already own the license to run the NT workstation; you just relaxed all the limits.  Instead of paying for a departmental server ($1000-ish), you pay merely for a $100-ish workstation.  You are using just the stuff on the CD that you got and the license you got.

If you ask Microsoft, I am sure they would say if you are using server features (relaxed limits), you need to buy the server edition even if you don’t use DNS, DHCP, etc.

That example above is more similar to hardware hacking – you already “own” the stuff.  This “enable/disable” by configuration is frequently used by some fairly high-end  (>$10,000 US$) software package, be it limiting the number of users, or showing advanced options from already installed modules, or number of concurrent files you can work with, so forth.  No added software, but just change of configuration data.

(Example 2)

An unnamed software package requires user to “activate” the software.  Things are well and you used it for some time.  Now time to upgrade the OS to Windows 2099.  After upgrading the OS, the software wants to redo the activation but it won’t activate.  Their view is, with a more powerful OS, you can do more than what you paid for.  If you want to do more, you have to pay more: the upgrade is $x to run it in this newly minted more powerful OS.  Now, you can down grade the OS back, or break the activation so that the software can use the new OS.

One can argue “this unnamed package is at lower price because it can only do 3456 tasks and can’t sing to you.”  If you break the activation and get it to run in the new OS, now by merely hacking the stuff in your machine, it can sing to you as you work, and do 5678 tasks instead of just 3456 tasks.  Now you got more and didn’t pay company $x for the heart and sweat that went into developing these features.

Are you stealing?  You are still using the same software, except you can do more by hacking the activation away.

In the two examples above, we are talking pure intellectual property.  In the case of hardware hacking, you are also talking intellectual property as well – the intellectual property that cooperates with the hardware to give you the features and functions you purchased.  These companies are selling capabilities and features.  You are getting the higher capability and more feature without paying for it.

I think the two examples above serves as a better foundation for the discussion here than hacking something like trial software which one clearly does not own.

To expand feature by hacking, the one justification one may use is: "I did not purchase that, but I worked (by means of hacking) to enhance what I purchased, so the added feature came from my labor."    Is that right?  Is that legal?

Rick

[JuiceKing]

This is license looks like it might apply to Sony Vegas:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/corporate/eula

The Software is licensed, not sold. Sony grants you a limited license to use the Software only on one (1) computer or mobile device, as applicable, and you may create one (1) back up copy of the Software.

Shame that their online registration process allows me to install the software on multiple machines. It asks you for a serial number every time you install it on a new machine, and it validates it online.

Dave.

The logic bothers me.

It's OK to help yourself to obviously locked capabilities in a product because the security mechanism didn't stop you. (I think that's what you are saying.)

So is it OK to rob a bank...because you know how to pick a safe?

Or take candy from a child because he's unable to stop you?

Where does it end?

[RCMR]

"Lots of folk have illegally downloaded their favourite movies from the Net -- mine are store-bought disks.

Sure, I have some music that's been downloaded from the Net -- but that's only because when I couldn't find anyone who actually stocked the albums concerned so I *couldn't* buy them."

that's simply what a double standard means. If you couldn't that doesn't mean you get them illegally. I don't hate downloading movies from the net or so cuz all my movies like this... but to say it's right if I "couldn't" buy them.. no.

If the music I wanted to buy was not for sale any more then how could *anything* I do deprive the owners of revenue?

So, my act of downloading the music didn't deprive them of anything -- because they were not willing to take my money even when I wanted to give it to them.

[EEVblog]

The logic bothers me.

It's OK to help yourself to obviously locked capabilities in a product because the security mechanism didn't stop you. (I think that's what you are saying.)
So is it OK to rob a bank...because you know how to pick a safe?

That is a ridiculous analogy.
You purchase the hardware, it's yours, you've paid for it, you legally purchased a tangible item, ownership of that item transfers to the buyer. When that happens you should be able to do what you want with it. If the manufacturer wants to hide something of extra value inside of there, then that's their risk.
Robbing the bank, is bloody well robbing the bank!, taking a tangible item without paying for it 

Dave.

[Mechatrommer]

Did you buy any Microsoft software? Apart from some family/volume licensing schemes, almost all of them are also limited to one computer. The only exception of the programs I checked was ironically Altium.

although its ironically expensive for normal mortals. different businesses use different model and targets to gain profits. some targetting larger pool but ask for less, some do not have to, they can live with lesser customers... you guess why? if i want to be a numbskull i will complain the price is unreasonable nosensically high for that "simple" thing, but i wont because i'm not a numbskull because i know why, they got staffs they need to pay working for the next version. its like (if you ever) fishing. you can target for smaller fish but you need many, if you need bigger fish you need to go a bit further off the shore and fish only 1 or 2 probably and return home. both are valid strategy imho.

having perused this thread, its quite hard to discuss without "filling the gap", you cannot exterminate villains, or "rule breakers" ever! or somebody who simply "ignorant" or "doesnt know", be it the subjects discussed here or even the normal theft that went into your house. so simply i will lay the "digest" from the "one system of faith" that i know.

"in order a DEAL or BUY-SELL is successfully made, both parties must agree or happy"

if the seller tells you can do this but cant do that if you buy this item, if you agree you buy, the deal is made, if not you go away find something else. in our language its the "contract" or agreement "letter" or "file" whatever form it is, it also can simply be a "verbal" understanding. if you bought it and then you breach that agreement, and seller is not happy about it, you can be considered "stealing", "cheating" or "immoral" whatever you want to call it, "its just a word, what matters is the connection it implies" - (matrix programmer of the love). punishing the immoral is another out of subject so i wont touch it. theft can get away, "filling the gap" is the only way to deal with the issue.

having said that... based on the "digest", hacking rigol ds1052e to ds1102e is ILLEGAL IF the manufacturer is not happy about it, if they purposely leaked the info so people can make the hack, that probably is another issue. now why the hacking is illegal? because you pay the cost of ds1052e, not the cost of ds1102e ($100 more) you should be able to understand the reasoning its already mentioned here. same thing with software, licensing and what not... look back at the digest and think carefully, you may like it and you may wont YMMV.

edit: i forgot i more condition.... let me re-state...

"hacking rigol ds1052e to ds1102e is ILLEGAL IF the manufacturer is not happy about it" AND IF they have had clearly stated in somewhere or in the file that you cannot hack 1052 to 1102 or of equivalent meaning. to be frank, i've never seen it so i consider myself have made the deal (buy-sell) without any contract or understanding, i assume both me and rigol are happy

[EEVblog]

having said that... based on the "digest", hacking rigol ds1052e to ds1102e is ILLEGAL IF the manufacturer is not happy about it

BTW, I've had more than one manufacturer (I won't name names) tell me that they accept the risk that people will hack their crippled products, and in fact expect that a certain percentage of people will do exactly that.

Dave.

[kolonelkadat]

The fundamental problem is it is not really fair to sell copies of software.
Copy costs nothing to make and has no value.
Nobody deserves money for doing nothing.
The value is in actually creating the first original of the software and that is what should be paid for!
We need ways to pay programmers to work on open source, free software.
Until the sale of digital copy fallacy is eliminated, there can be no peace!

Idiot. Selling a copy of software is no different from selling a copy of hardware.
You arent paying for the software. You are paying for the years of development. Just like with hardware. Do you really think a $20 000 device actually costs $20 000 in parts and manufacturing? The cost of manufacture is probably less than 20% of what you pay. The rest of the price is R&D, marketing, etc.

@op
If you pay for it, its yours to do with as you please. If you dont pay for it, its stealing.

[Marco]

If you pay for it, its yours to do with as you please. If you dont pay for it, its stealing.

So if I pay for some software which contains features which my license doesn't normally unlock I'm free to unlock those features?

[bradleytron]

If you develop any bit of software, or anything for that matter, I assure you that somewhere in it are replications of other people's work, those who came before you, those from whom you learned the craft of programming, so how do you account for these contributions, how are these folks compensated with their justly deserved revenues? If, as the programmer/software designer, you only get a tinny fraction of the total revenue's, how is it then fare to talk about "intellectual property" and "justly deserved revenues" when some unspecified group of "share" holders and CEO's are getting most of the benefit?

Software programmers use 3rd party components and libraries frequently.  A lot of them cost money.  I know I've bought component sets, icons, etc and used them to develop software for sale.  Those 3rd party suppliers got paid by the software developers (before one copy was even sold), so why shouldn't the software developers get paid too?

Software companies have costs too.  I'm guessing that a lot of people have no idea of how much work goes into writing, testing and debugging a piece of software.  In the case of big software companies, why aren't their shareholders entitled to make money from selling the software?  They are the ones that stumped up the money (in advance) after all.

Its reasonable what you say but for myself its a question of how much do the share holder's and CEO's take and is this distribution fair, overall? I, for one, often question this and ask myself how a company can justify the prices they charge, i.e., $5000.00 for Altium as it was quoted by someone on this form? After you tally up the labour, capital expenses, rework, upgrade costs, and the total revenues over the life of the product is this price, as one example, still reasonable?

When I was writing my comments I was reminded of a friend who, as an academic, developed all sorts of great instrumentation for research in oceanography then published the results in various academic journals. Well, it was not long before companies were turning profit from his ideas. I understood that he was okay with this but what transpired was that others were able to benefit from his ideas without him ever receiving a penny! I think its all a question of degrees of interpretation and the problem, as I see it, is this lack of a clear and mutual universal understanding about how profit distribution should work versus how it actually works and some folks in the chain are getting outrageous amounts of money while those, as I suggest, who are doing the real work, are not getting a fair share. So, if I can download and use software, somehow in breach of whatever agreement exists, in order to evaluate or learn that software, then screw the corporations who make it because the end result is that the revenues do circle back into the source company one way or another because, I, like most others I suspect, would pay for it if I/we wound up actually using it to generate revenue.