digital property

[John_James]

@cab21

someone buys a daw. the person can install it on their computer,

K…so someone pays money for a phsycial disc with information stored on it…or they pay money to download and install the information, which is basically nothing more than a pattern of ones and zeros. Not property.

They’re putting a pattern into their own personal property (their computer). So far so good.

but they don’t have access to the program without first receiving a licence from the company that created the daw. once the licence is installed on a dongle, then the person is able to access the daw. if the person creates a crack that allows use without the licence and the dongle, they are using the product without a licence agreement to use the protect, as under a licence agreement, the person must access the product through a licence and a dongle registered with the company that created and sells the product. there is no charge to install the program on the computer, but there is a charge to buy the licence to access the program.

Nowhere in any of this did you describe even a breach of contract (at least, not an enforceable contract anyway.) Essentially your argument boils down to “well when you buy the software you are making a promise to not reverse engineer it or find a way to make it work in a way that the company that created it doesn’t want it to work.”

I’m sorry, but that’s just not an enforceable contract. Again, if you really want to argue that simple promises are enforceable, you’re necessarily going to have to argue that slavery is justifiable and legitimate. If you want to go down that road, I suggest you make another thread.

Otherwise, you’re going to have to come up with a new line of argumentation, because continuing to rest on this “broken promise” argument is not going to get you anywhere, even if you continue to insist on calling it “breach of contract”.

perhaps it would mean companies would not sell programs, but rent usage, so unathorized usage could not be because someone owned the product.

Maybe some, but probably not all. (Just like now.)

so maybe the question would be how companies that currently have a business strategy around IP would be able to make it should they no longer have the IP? the companies that create products sell software licences to software products, are they going to have to depend on donations and sales in other areas to make up lost income?

Now we’re getting somewhere. It seems like your whole deal in this entire line of conversation wasn’t so much that you actually believed what you were arguing, but that you just had to create a way to cry wrongdoing on the part of a so-called “pirate”, because you simply couldn’t fathom a way for anyone to make money in digital industry without some form of IP. This echoes a logical fallacy known as “argumentum ad ignorantiam”, or argument from ignorance. You’re basically saying: “because I can’t think of a way this would work, there must not be a way…so I need to figure a way to make a libertarian argument for keeping it illegal to copy stuff.”

Again, if you’re actually interested in this concept of IP and freedom of information, check out the resources.

For software in particular, you might see

Without Intellectual Property#Computer Software

Funding for Creation and Innovation in an IP-Free World

Examples of Ways Content Creators Can Profit Without Intellectual Property

Yet Another Study Finds Patents Do Not Encourage Innovation

I didn’t even look that hard. I know there’s more specific ones, but I didn’t feel like going through it all. There’s a lot there in that link. If you’re really interested in this, just start going through at least some of it. If not, don’t worry about it. But please don’t consciously choose to remain ignorant and simply continue to attempt to find a way to make pro-IP arguments work. They just don’t.