Point: An assembly talk in Fall 96 (Steve Bergen)
Counterpoint: A short essay by Don Olivier from the Boston Home titled "Software Honesty, a Dissenting Opinion"
Part One:
Truth and Consequences
Good morning. Although I am somewhat nervous about performing the No Copying Software -- Gotta Be Honest at Nobles-- Blues here on stage, I am not at all nervous about sharing the main message of the morning. So please allow me to put down this guitar for a while and share some personal thoughts with all of you as I have done in the past.
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This morning several faculty members and students will come forward and give you glimpses of their computer projects. I thought that it might be interesting to see a little bit of the “blood, sweat and tears” that goes into the making of a piece of software, a MIDI music creation, a Videoshop production or an HTML Web Page.
In fact, that is really what the No Copying Software Blues is all about. When we say that copying software illegally is wrong, we are not just talking about the fact that it is a Federal offense. As I see it, there are two far more significant issues.
Issue #1: A computer program is a prime example of what lawyers call “intellectual property.” Other examples include of course books, video productions, audio tapes, artistic work, musical work to name just a few. In all cases, the finished product is not a piece of furniture but an intellectual creation. When you copy the item without paying for it, you are undermining in a small but symbolic way the entire system of artists, writers, musicians, software programmers who make their living by creating not physical things like furniture but intellectual property. For example, many of you have seen and played the Where’s Bakes Computer CD that we have produced at Nobles.
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in this spin-off of Where’s Waldo, the user is challenged to find Mr. Baker who is hiding in one of the rooms on campus. The main objective is to provide the Nobles visitor with an electronic tour of campus, but I got intrigued by how to program the game so that the user would see a green or red button indicator dependent on whether you were getting closer or further away from Bakes. I spent days and days thinking about how to implement this feature. I came up with a computer program that is several pages long, but here on the next slide I have highlighted the essential section.
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As you can see towards the bottom of the screen, I used the distance formula from algebra to calculate how many pixels separates Bakes from the visitor. By making a map with x-y coordinates of every location on campus and storing the values in different variables, I was able to achieve my goal. Based on the value of the variable I called DISTOLD, the computer decides on getting warmer vs getting colder and displays the right button. But lots of bugs, mistakes and struggles along the way. This entire computer CD represents an awful lot of human time by a number of people. Every computer program you buy is intellectual property created by programmers. Computers are not magic. The neat things they do come from the hard work, the blood sweat and tears, of human beings.
Issue #2 and probably the more important one: If you copy software, you are being dishonest. I wish I could say it in a more polite, phlegmatic way, but I can’t. Many people use the phrase “software pirate” which is a wonderful euphemism for “software thief.” Yes, you are being dishonest. The honest user of software purchases each program that she/he uses and pays for shareware. How many of us are honest users of software? I would love to find out the answer to that question. I circulated an early copy of this speech to all parents, trustees and faculty on line. I asked them to send a note to the conference called Honesty located within the Academic section of NoblesNet. Their comments are posted publically and might, in fact, be titled Truth AND Consequences. Some of you are too young to remember a TV show called Truth OR consequences, but the point I am trying to make is that if you choose to be honest, there can be MANY negative consequences. Being dishonest in the student world can have the advantages of getting a better grade point average, getting a better SAT score or getting into a bar when you are not old enough. Being honest sometimes means not getting those “advantages” which is sometimes tough when many of your peers are doing otherwise.
And yes in the adult world as well. Being dishonest as an adult can have significant advantages. It can mean saving money on taxes. It can mean making more money in your company. It can mean having more audio tapes, sheet music or software. It can mean avoiding expenses on physical plant improvements that must comply with fire codes, pollution standards, handicapped access codes and environmental regulations.
If you think about it, the primary CONSEQUENCES of being HONEST with computer software are expense and inconvenience. In my own life, it took me much too long to realize that the consequences of being honest were worth it.
As you read the adult opinions posted within the Honesty conference, I hope you think of this theme: Truth AND Consequences. Fred Clifford, the head of our board of trustees writes that “I have signed the Wittenberg Door and have always purchased all of my software - that’s easy. I have thus far resisted those who want to copy from me. This can be especially difficult with friends as many of you can attest, I am sure.”
What Mr. Clifford is raising is a third consequence of being honest -- peer pressure and strain in relationships amongst friends.
Honesty is an essential value of Nobles. Any form of dishonesty is unacceptable.
What a wonderful statement. I recall vividly seeing those words outside of Mr. Baker’s office when I came to Nobles in the Fall of 1993 inquiring about a job here. I knew right away that this was a school that I wanted to teach at.
Is software piracy dishonest? Of course it is. The software programmer spends weeks, months and years of blood, sweat and tears producing the product. The honest computer user buys the program and installs it on her or his hard drive. One purchase and one installation on one hard drive. That is the basic rule of computer honesty. Yes I know there are exceptions, but that is the fundamental rule.
I remember being a software programmer back in 1984. I produced several computer programs on the Apple II called The TC Filer and The TC Multiplier.
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I sold them for $20. I wrote manuals for them. I sold the rights to Scholastic Magazine and was incredibly proud when I saw the program listed in their catalog although I only got $2 for each one they sold. I sold a single copy to Isa Schaff and a site license to Doug Stein, the computer coordinator here at Nobles. Isa Schaff and Doug Stein were honest computer users. They paid for a product and had their own legal copy of my software.
But you know what? I quickly found out that the program was being duplicated and used by numerous people who hadn’t paid for it. We offered unlimited phone support for people who purchased our software. One day a high school student calls us up and asks for technical support. When asked for his registration number, he tells us that lots of kids in his school have copies and that none of them have registration numbers. Was he being dishonest? Did he take something that someone had created without paying for it? Isn’t copying software just a 20th century, high-tech version of stealing?
A new issue? No way. I take you back to 1600 and WIlliam Shakespeare. In act II scene II of Hamlet, Lord Polonius says to Hamlet “Do you know me, my lord?”
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After calling him a fishmonger, Hamlet proceeds to say “Ay, sir, to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.” What a wonderful quote. No wonder Mr. Clifford has a hard time saying NO to his 9,999 friends that want to copy his software. This quote from Shakespeare is almost as good as our Nobles community principle about honesty. We have technology galore in our society. The trip into the 21st century is going to be an amazing one. But if we don’t take the values of the past with us, we will be in trouble.
I do believe that we are perhaps 1 school out of 10,000 in our use of technology. I know without a doubt that we have a more active e-mail system than almost all schools throughout the country. But I also do believe that we are way ahead of most schools in terms of computer honesty. That is a much harder fact to prove. Two years ago, we posted numerous statements on a doorway as we tried to publicize the issues of software piracy and honesty. We named it the 1994 Wittenberg Door because we felt that we needed to have a reformation here at Nobles in our approach to computer honesty. As many of you know from European history, Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on a doorway at Wittenberg College back in 1517. His reformation was aimed at the Catholic Church.
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Will our reformation here at Nobles be as significant as Martin Luther’s? Probably not. But honesty is a very personal issue and the goal of our 1994 Wittenberg Door Reformation here at Nobles is not about reforming all of society. The collective attitudes of students, faculty, parents and trustees towards the honesty issue here at this “small school in Dedham” to paraphrase Mr. Baker is something that I think we can ALL be very proud. Although the negative consequences of being honest are both financial and inconvenience, I would venture the opinion that we have more honest computer users here at Nobles than at most schools in the country.
As you listen to the various speakers today talk about their creations, please keep in mind the fact that if you are not an honest computer user and if you use or copy software illegally, then somewhere out there is a programmer that you are affecting and disrespecting in a small symbolic way.
And small symbolic ways add up. It is estimated that for every piece of software such as ClarisWorks, there are 2 illegal copies out there. Ultimately that becomes issue #3, a consumer issue, one of dollars and cents. Half of the software programmers and publishers in this country are out of business, bankrupt, chapter 11 because there are not enough honest computer users out there. Lord Polonius would certain tell us that there are least 9,999 computer users who are not honest. But he would also tell us that this drives up the cost for honest computer users who pay for it. Simple economics. Dishonesty, too, has economic consequences.
But enough issues, we need to kick off this morning’s sequence of presenters and I need to warm up my guitar. The Diskettes are getting ready to sing.
SOFTWARE HONESTY-- A DISSENTING OPINION
After my father retired he used to make his own granola. It was
wonderful: better tasting and better nutritionally than what you can buy
from a bin at the health food store and far, far better than what comes
in a brightly colored box from the supermarket. It was a treat to have
breakfast at his house, and a bag of granola was a treasured gift when
he came to visit.
Had it been software he made, rather than cereal, he might have been
called dishonest. "The honest user of software purchases each program
that she/he uses and pays for shareware." Well, he didn't buy it.
"That's different," you might say, "he made it himself." But he didn't
grow his own oats; he didn't even shred the coconut he put in; he just
mixed the ingredients together and did some roasting. How is that
different from giving a friend a game on a diskette I bought and copied
myself?
"Well, it's his own special granola, not just a copy." (The implication
is that he's therefore not taking bread out of the mouths of the honest
workers of Battle Creek.) But how different does it have to be? Most
of us would probably agree that a spinoff of "Where's Waldo" in the
setting of Noble and Greenough is all right but a copy of Microsoft Word
with the text translated into Thai is not; but how do you draw the line?
It gets worse: my father adapted his recipe from one he had seen
published somewhere. Is he violating someone's intellectual property
rights? Is he "undermining in a small but symbolic way the entire
system of artists, writers, musicians, software programmers who make
their living by creating ... intellectual property"? Again, where do
you draw the line, and how?
These are devil's advocate questions, and seem foolish on the first
reading. We're apt to assume that custom and established legal
doctrine give familiar and satisfactory answers. The principle of "Fair
Use", for example, assures us that copying one recipe from a book is not
plagiarism, although copying a hundred might be, depending on how they
were used. BUT ...
1 In the context of software and electronic communication the customs
and legal doctrines are not established, and they are currently in
flux. The Software Publishers' Association, for example, is
lobbying energetically in Congress, with considerable success, to
make stricter rules and much harsher criminal penalties for copying
software than apply in other areas.
2 Even the customs and doctrines we're familiar with aren't as solid
as they may seem. Congress is considering legislation right now
that would put an end to "fair use" at least in electronically
communicated information and perhaps everywhere, and there has been
a steady erosion of the "public domain" in recent decades which
seems to be accelerating. Recently proposed legislation could make
it a crime to communicate the box scores of major league ball games
without permission or to lend a book to a friend.
Ethical issues are never simple, and in the context of software they're
particularly muddy. I can't accept advice that says "just play by the
rules" when the rules are being written and rewritten to serve the
interests of large industries and even particular corporations. (West
Publishing, for example, is working hard for copyright legislation that
would turn its present _de facto_ control of the country's public court
records into more or less permanent ownership.) And I can't accept the
easy libertarian assertion that what's good for free enterprise is good
for the common welfare, when I see examples all around me of the
opposite. (The already-infamous "Halloween Document" from Microsoft is
only the latest evidence. See http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/halloween.html.)
I've written statistical software that's been sold nationally and
internationally, and I believe as strongly as anyone that programmers
deserve to be compensated fairly for their creative work (or even
better, in my own case :-). But to turn that principle into a simple
ironclad rule about "software honesty" is too easy. Every principle
that's strong enough to have meaningful consequences will need to be
compromised sometimes. As Aldous Huxley said, the only completely
consistent people are the dead.
The policy I advocate and try (imperfectly) to follow goes something
like this:
1 Programmers deserve to be compensated for their work (see above).
2 Software should be free, or at least as free as literature is free.
3 Those two principles often contradict each other (not always).
4 When a practical conflict arises, think carefully about the
situation and do what you think is the right thing under the
circumstances.
5 Underscore the last phrase. Make sure your reasoning is not
self-serving or merely convenient.
#5 is the hard part.
The situation of the software ethicist doesn't have to be as gloomy as
I've made it seem. For a more positive view of large-scale software
development see Eric Raymond's discussion of Open Source Software in
"The Cathedral and the Bazaar",
http://www.redhat.com//redhat/cathedral-bazaar.
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Don Olivier
The Boston Home
don@hsph.harvard.edu