I know that they mention BOTH hacked versions OR (XOR) invalid licenses. But this is clearly falacious putting these two issue together, don't they know from the beginning how an original (unhacked) version is going to behaves? We, users, may not need to know the executable internals, but Stata Corp. shoud know, shouldn't they?
I don't regard that A POSTERIORI reply in the user list is a valid legal warning. And again such a reply is not CLEAR: why aren't they explicit about what is going on? Is this really clear and, therefore, fair?!
I agree (never said the contrary) that any vendor can protect their copyrights established in the legislation, BUT precisely respecting the legislation. It is not necesary that a big warning is always displayed (as honest users do not need to know), but many many other vendors just inform when an invalid license is entered and quit. I don't think that "pirates DO get away with it" in this case, right?
My point is that Stata Corp. MUST also respect legislation and introducing Malware is not right. Malware is (according to the law) any dishonest, malicious and unwanted software, even (Dear Nick Cox) if this only affects pirates. Not any action against pirates is neither legal not valid, and in this case the obscure, intrusive behaviours by Stata Corp. are not.
--- El vie, 6/11/09, Kit Baum <[email protected]> escribió:
> De: Kit Baum <[email protected]>
> Asunto: st: re: Stata 10 is Malware (also version 11?)
> Para: [email protected]
> Fecha: viernes, 6 de noviembre, 2009 12:34
> <>
> DemoCrazy said
>
> I tried to install my *legal* copy of Stata 10 with one of
> those serials available on the web. I found the same
> behaviour: random dropping of variables.
>
> Therefore the original Stata itself (not version modified
> by others as gus from Stata suggest) includes undocumented
> functions: this is definition of MALWARE.
>
>
> This person quotes a Statalist posting from Alan Riley. If
> you read that posting:
>
> "The only time we have ever seen a problem like this has
> been with
>
> (certain corrupt or modified executables)
> or
> (licenses which are sometimes available from unofficial
> sources on the internet)"
>
> punctuation added for clarity. If you apply the
> normal rules of English grammar to the OR conditional, it
> suggests that a StataCorp official is saying that either one
> of these circumstances could be associated with this
> behavior. It does not claim that the executable has to be
> hacked to provoke such behavior.
>
> I have no inside knowledge on the workings of Stata's
> internals when presented with a license code known to be
> bogus, but the statement above IMHO is fair warning that
> those who use such licenses should expect a less than
> satisfactory experience.
>
> Should software vendors put up a big warning dialog and say
> "We know you're a pirate: this program will now quit"? Or
> perhaps just shell format C:? I suppose different
> vendors have different strategies to deal with software
> piracy. But it doesn't surprise me that any software vendor
> tries to ensure that the pirates don't get away with it.
>
> Kit
>
> Kit Baum | Boston College
> Economics & DIW
> Berlin | http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba1.html
>
> An
> Introduction to Stata Programming
> | http://www.stata-press.com/books/isp.html
> An Introduction to Modern Econometrics
> Using Stata | http://www.stata-press.com/books/imeus.html
>
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