Solandri
Illustrious
- Jan 4, 2012
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So devices which play CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, and allow you to browse the World Wide Web are illegal in Australia? All of them require making a temporary duplicate copy of the copyrighted material in a computer's memory.
The entire problem stems from people trying to treat software (which has no physical form nor limitation) as if it were a physical object. If you prohibit duplication of copyrighted material as if it were a physical copy, then playing CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, and the WWW become illegal. If you allow duplication so these devices can function, then it creates a grey area where some copying is OK but other copying is not. Way back before computers, software was synonymous with a physical copy (the media it came on, whether it be paper, vinyl, or tape). So treating it as a physical copy sort of worked. But the advent of photocopy machines, tape recorders, VCRs, and today digital media, forever destroyed the one-to-one correspondence between the physical media and the software written on it. It no longer makes sense to treat software as if it has a physical existence.
If you treat software as software - a pattern if bits - and say you're buying a license to use that software, then these problems all disappear. The license entitles you to read the book, listen to the music, view the movie, or play the game. Doesn't matter if the bits which make up the software came from a paper printout, magnetic tape, an EPROM cartridge, digital download, a neighbor's copy of the disc, or a backup you made of the original. Doesn't matter how many intermediate copies a device has to make to allow you to read/listen/view/play the software. If you have a license you're authorized, if you don't have a license you're not. Simple.
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