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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sm!rk" data-source="post: 320518" data-attributes="member: 6467">This is a bit offtopic and I'll just say that generally I agree with your views on what it "means" and what it should "mean". It being copyright. But, as I said pcgen is not fighting for some noble purpose. They specifically want people to use their product, for personal fame, more donations I don't know, but its not to "free D&D and my 3rd lvl bard from the evil tyranny of WoTC".That was assumed, I saw no arguments that pcgen was a parody (but actually maybe it is, its a parody of bad UI design taken to the extreme.) or fair use.I doubt that highly. I could see that maybe for things in the core books that weren't in the SRD, but all their other products? Yeah but as much as we disliked *that* kid, we hated the kid that stole the ball and popped more.Yeah, and with their 20 developers and 100+ other support staff it would have cost them 100 times more. OS works when the people working aren't paid, there is no reasonable commercial way to manage the same system. Except as a loss leader.Yeah and when I was young I had the same self-delusion. RIAA and the MPAA are evil organizations, thats their charter, but music and movies are a buisness, so they do fight to protect that buisness. And that battle is already lost, because many people do go to stores and pay for the music. Those are the ones that decided that music on CDs were property, now since the majority of those people decided any other view is not the social norm.By taking it without paying you aren't saying you don't agree with the view of property, you are saying that you still want the property, but don' want to pay for it. The people that truelly oppose RIAA are those that reject commerically sold music and buy independent, or sing in the back yard with bongos and guitars.Think back on Thoreau, he choose to not pay some taxes, and he also opposed anyone else paying it for him. If he let others pay for him then it would just mean he was a cheap bastard, by also opposing that others pay in his stead he kept his ideals pure.  You could also steal the music on napster and then send some money to the original artists (ie what you think its worth). You think anyone ever did that? Nope. So all of those arguments are false.You are being very loose with logic here, a grocery withholding an apple from me as I die of starvation is impolite, or inhuman, but not infringment upon my natural right to live.I used to share those views, but then I got a job and entered a world where bills aren't "the things my parents pay."They are truer pirates in the real sense than thieves, but those terms are equivelant. Pirates took advantage of the open spaces of the oceans, they could get away with it because they could literally get away with it, where it is booty and such, you know pirate treasure. Software and other pirates today work on the same principles, copy protection is weak and easily defeated, there will come a time when that isnt true and you will see software piracy go away just as high seas piracy did.</blockquote>

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