3/1/1982 and a little babe shall lead themI challenge you to publish the attached letter. [The letter:]
In glancing through the "letters to the editor" in your January 1982 issue, I noticed the usual assortment of complaints about "uncopiable" software; one person found his purchase (a diet program) so protected that it didn't even do the tasks that it was advertised to be able to do; another person bought a game that was subsequently discontinued by the company that made it. Then there were—and are—the countless others who didn't write to you to tell you that a "protected program" they bought couldn't be modified to suit the buyer's needs, couldn't be saved on eight-inch disks or other recording media that suit the buyer, couldn't be backed-up with a copy, etc., etc. I was amused to see that, predictably, you sided with your advertisers in seeing nothing wrong with such practices; yet you condemned any suggestion that buyers of such software can do as they please with their purchase, be it removing the "protection" scheme, modifying the program, etc. How hypocritical! Consider the following arguments:
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