Two letters in issue 76 particularly caught my attention.

First, Mr. K. Hewson's. If you wanted a motor car and could not afford it, would you feel justified in stealing one? And, if you are working, would you feel happy about a third person helping themselves out of your pay packet? When you advocate tape copying on any scale you advocate stealing from the publisher and robbing the authors of part of their income.

Is this really part of ethics?

Next, Neil Olner. I could not agree more, and think I know the reason. Every sport and pastime has its lunatic fringe who buy everything that can get their hands on. The Spectrum's lunatic fringe must run into tens of thousands, a ready market for junk books.

But here is a possible remember. Never buy a book by mail order. All decent bookshops are made for good books so be wary of a book which does not find its way onto their shelves.

Spend at least fifteen minutes browsing through a book's pages. Should the bookseller object, go to another shop.

If only all computer owners would adopt this approach, the junk books would cease to sell.

Now a final word to the less well-off. There are plenty of good games listings in the magazines. Why not enter these instead of stealing from publishers and authors? If you decide to do this, take a little time to ensure that you understand every line. Then you will realise just how much hard slog goes into writing a program. And, just as important, you will learn first how to change and improve the published programs and then how to produce your own. You could soon be turning out marketable material. Then if you find your programs are being pirated, you will be hopping mad.

C. Matthews
London W2