L. Hipkin's letter (Issue 43) challenges us to defend software copyright. This can be done on two distinct, but complementary, counts.
First, L. Hipkin is incorrect: royalties payable under copyright don't mean the copyright holder is being paid over and over again for one piece of work: they simply mean all buyers of that work pay a share of the financial reward for the work. If the retail price of a program cassette were to pay for the whole work of writing the program, almost no-one would be able to afford it. This, certainly means some people will earn far more from the programs they write than do others, but to suggest that these are 'lucky people' protected by an 'artificial barrier' is false.
Copyright law is, it it true, an artificial barrier, but good programs are not written by luck; they are the result of judicious application of skills. Mr. Hipkin clearly believes in the virtues of fairness and honesty, and there are people who would argue that it is fair to pay more for a job well done.
And what is a 'good' program? Well, one answer is a program that pleases enough people to sell a lot of copies. Fairness also seems to indicate we have a right to the fruits of our labours. In this respect there is no intrinsic difference between writing programs for micros and growing apples for market.
Now consider other effects of protection, or lack of it. If an author is reasonably confident of a fair return for effort expended, then time and energy can be put into improving the quality of the program - which means fewer, but better, programs.
If the author knows whatever they do will soon be copied (and the rip-off time for a good program will be at least as short as for a bad one, while the loss from a good program will be greater, as more people will copy it), then the tendency will be to rehash known successes, thereby hitting the market the maximum number of times for the minimum of effort. As a result we get adaptation rather than innovation. To some extent this already happens because of the difficulties of copyright protection in this area.
To sum up, fairness demands the author be rewarded suitably for the job done and, as the editorial comment adds, it's the consumer who pays for software piracy. But in two ways: not only in higher prices, but also in the lower quality of the product. At this point I should declare my interest: I am a consumer, *not* an originator or publisher of software.
4th February 1984
