Comment by eupharis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eupharis | Hacker News Reader

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Sargun, your point was, I think, why is it that we treat software modding differently than we treat hardware modding?

The chorus of "The hardware is hardware, and we can do whatever we want!" misses the point.

It is a good point sargun. One I wish I had an answer for.

Perhaps one explanation lies in the fact that some level of risk and skill and ingenuity and research is required to actually mod hardware. So we feel like the hardware modders deserve the fruits. But at we feel like the software "modders" don't, because most of them are thoughtlessly running some riskless script devised by someone else.

I am not saying this should be our attitude. I am just saying I too have the knee-jerk reaction "the hardware is the hardware" but am far less certain when it comes to software. And I don't really understand why.

It's about the volatility and potential danger to copyright holders. If something requires a hardware hack, it's always going to take that much effort to apply. There's no easy way to instantaneously apply that hack to millions of peoples' hardware with minimal human effort.

With a software hack, it's much more fearful because once it gets packaged as a crack, it's four clicks to a perceived infringement on the copyright holder's rights. A barrier to entry this low makes software mods much more frightful to rightsholders.

Though the grandparent is right that these are similar practices in principle, people react differently because one is perceived as a widespread threat to the traditional mechanism of creative livelihood and the other is perceived as an advanced hack that will be done only be a couple of tinkerers. Most people are happy to provide encouragement and information to the latter group, but are more worried about the first group, as most software companies depend heavily on copyright law for their business model.

One possible future: Bits exist physically on my hardware. I get to twiddle them however I want. Furthermore, I can speak freely about having done so.

This reality is at least partly responsible for the emergence of software as a service. Can't crack what you don't have.

Rosetta Stone is a great example of this. After years of heavy piracy and failed client-side protections, their solution was to make the program web and subscription based. While rips of services like this are still possible, they're much more effort than cracking a client-side application.

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