Actually, if a certain kind of contract proves to often be one you can’t count on then that kind of contract is a bad contract.

As for “order”, you might want to see http://www.memeverse.com/2008/06/10/the-religion-of-order/

There in fact is order, the best one there can ever be, once you just let go and live with reality as your only “law” – the way universe works – the only law that cannot arbitrarily be devised, the only law that cannot be broken. You act, the universe around you reacts. You observe the reaction and adapt your actions to get a reaction you like better.

Voluntaryism is beautiful because it is the idea that says: “Let go, don’t *force* your perception of reality. The reality is out there and it always applies. Learn more about it and then learn to use it to make your life a better one.”

There may be cases when they fail and the disputed parties fail to uphold the decisions of the arbiter, but there is only so far they could go in rejecting his decisions, limited by the costs of arbiter fees, their patience and the cost of time. Yet if they resort to violently taking justice in their own hands, it’s gonna cost them both even more. Whatever they do, it is likely that the first arbiter hired is going to be the one whose decision they will have to live with, not because they are forced to, but because the costs of pursuing the matter further may be too high to justify the value of doing so.

The agreement does not give them access to the software once they have already got the copy. Respecting the agreement from that point on merely becomes a matter of honor and keeping a good reputation of themselves as a customer or business person (which everyone in a free market is essentially treated as). This is what enforces the agreements – the desire to be valued as someone who can be trusted as someone who respects agreements.

Of course, if the thing you got by the initial agreement is merely access, not a whole copy (like using online software), then respecting the agreement also means having access, like you said.

But when you did get a copy that element no longer exists. In that case if you fail to uphold the agreement and get sued through the arbiter for it, we get the situation I described above. And again, ultimately it would be found that a condition not to copy and share software IS among conditions which aren’t acceptable, and you conceded that such conditions may exist.

Conditions that are “banned” in a free market, “banned” as in commonly found unaccpetable and impractical, aren’t conditions which you must not use (there is no government to *force* you not to). But if you use them you do so at your own risk. You don’t need to fear a fine, nor a jail nor any sort of violence against you for doing so. Worst that can happen is that your business takes a drop, and you ultimately realize it was a bad move.

To explain this better here is a simple analogy. You jump off of the 5th floor’s balcony and break a leg. You also heard that a few other people did the same and got hurt by the ground too. Soon, jumping off of 5th floor balconies becomes considered a bad thing to do. It is in that sense “banned”.

But nobody is quite forbidding you from doing so anyway. However you can’t blame anyone else nor Earth and the Universe if you break a leg again. If something doesn’t work then it doesn’t work, unless you WANT to break a leg, or unless you WANT to lose business and pay arbiter costs over your impractical software use conditions.

Cheers

If someone acquires proprietary software in return for money and certain conditions, that is an agreement that makes their having the merchandise not a result of theft. As long as they use the software, the agreement (as it gives them access to the software) has value to them.

I’m not saying every condition should be acceptable, but if certain conditions are “banned”, the market is not free. If contracts cannot be counted on, there may be a market, and you might call it free, but I wouldn’t call the situation “order”

I see those properties as natural law because they always seem true and because they are not changeable by a human. It is the essence of our existence. Changing it would mean ceasing to be human and becoming a new kind of species.

The amount of certainty about that is consistent with the amount of certainty a scientist may usually accept before proclaiming a particular theory as a scientific law.

So just as an agreement can be forged by an act so it can be broken or terminated by another act, if that’s what an individual ultimately finds of most value to him or her. If an agreement involved using something under certain conditions yet someone breaks those conditions but continues using it, then the other party in an agreement has the right to try and sanction that, in essence return what he has given or is giving, or be paid damages for it.

Now, the reason I then said that it is unlikely for this to work after a while, and that people will ultimately get away with even breaking of such agreements is because there is a fatal flaw in the conditions specific to this case. In other words, it is just not consistent with reality. The developer may impose a condition that states that the user must stand on one foot every time he runs his program and the user may try to do so just to get the software. But if he fails (which he most certainly will eventually, especially considering that the dev is not always watching and that he did pay for his copy of software so the condition seemed unfair in the first place) and the developer somehow finds out, do you think he’d win the case with the arbiter?

Not quite.

Just the same, while you may require someone to not copy software or digital music or whatever, such requirement is just as surreal and ridiculous as requiring standing on one foot when using it. It’s simply incomprehensible that rational arbiters would consistently judge in favor of such conditions, when they are broken, because the programmer is in *reality* not losing anything and in *reality* there is no damage to repair!

Yes, this does mean that I consider proprietary software unnatural. It is, just as government and just as enforced law, a nation etc. an artificial abstract concept empowered by nothing, but an empty belief of a number of people. In reality, nobody is deprived from copying of software, yet can only gain.

And a free market would swiftly adapt to this reality because there is no belief that *makes* the surreal ideas survive by deception (usually self administered and collective) and force (administered by the agents of institutionalized force that is government, such as police).

That said, contracts or agreements have value when they have value to both of those who agree. If value is lost then the agreement fails either by the consent of both agreeing parties, or by it simply being impractical in reality (as is the case above).

Cheers

Copyright is based on nothing but agreements. It’s not all that simple on the internet, but if you buy software, the seller can require use conditions. Now they are implied by law and common knowledge, otherwise a prominent notice somewhere or a verbal agreement between source and destination could make it clear.

If contracts have no value, market cannot work.