> No! The company has simply endured 998,000 violations > of their license agreement, something they can create and > enforce based on copyright. You may think that translates > into the loss of $499M, and Mike may not. While I think the > company may be owed $499M by those who violated > their license, it is money they never had and in reality > were never likely to make. According to whom? I don't believe you've ever owned or managed a business. If someone uses a product you created and they have never paid for it; as the owner of that company you would most definately call that a loss. > > Everyone in the world may come up with some analog > for this license/copyright violation, but analogies are > made for people who may have a difficult time > understanding or relating to a situation. I do not think > we at TCLUG have this problem. We do not have to > call it Piracy or Theft because all of us can be made > to understand exactly what this is (if we don't know > already). > My puny intellect trembles in the shadow of your tremendous 10-pound brain. I'm not worthy. > The attempt to make an analogy is understandable > because the situation is complicated. Unfortunately, > complicated situations are where analogies fall apart > with the greatest speed. Well your weighty opinion goes against almost all pedagological evidence. I challenge you to prove your assertion. We can email off the list so we don't bore others with our debate > A non-analogy: > > You own or are employed at $SoftwarePublisher, > and your company produces $SoftwareProduct. $N > years of blood, sweat, and tears have gone into > making $SoftwareProduct the most $PositiveDescriptor > software on the market. You have recently discovered > that illegal copies of $SoftwareProduct are easily > available from a number of sources. > What can you do? > What should you do? > What will you do and why? > I see...a non-analogy analogy Mark Ring ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Get a free email address at http://www.ippimail.com and support your favorite charity without it costing you a penny. Now with 200mb storage and Google-powered search! Feelgood email!