[NTLK] eBay sale of Newton freeware

[James Fraser]

Hello,

--- On Tue, 6/29/10, L.W. Brown <lwb at mac.com> wrote:

>Agreed - whoever they are, and whatever their motive or knowledge, there 
>is /no/ reason to pay to download what can be legally downloaded for free!

If you'll pardon my saying so, that might only hold true if the buyer's time isn't worth anything. :)

Yes, if the seller is only offering the buyer a chance to download something that is readily available elsewhere online, the value you and I might attach to what the seller is offering may not be very high.  

However, if a potential buyer is in a hurry to get whatever it is the seller is offering, they might deem it acceptable to pay the asking price simply in the interests of obtaining it relatively quickly.  That way, they can stop spending time looking for it and move on to something else.

That's a proposition that some folks might consider worth a few dollars, even if you and I do not.

There's also the possibility (just the possibility, mind) that the eBay seller is offering the purchaser a chance to download the software from a really *fast* server somewhere as opposed to the buyer getting it off, say, a hand-cranked server located in the Ukraine that allows downloads only at a near-glacial speed.

To be clear: I'm not saying that the seller in question is necessarily a great guy/gal for doing what they're doing.  Only that declaring what they are doing to be entirely without value might be overstating things a tad, that's all. [shrugs]  I can understand the ire that someone flogging freeware might rouse, sure, but I can also understand why the seller might feel they are offering something that others might consider worth money.


Best,

James Fraser