It's a good policy not to post pirated games. That should be obvious to most people. But the real question is how to determine what was pirated. We all know that Hays is known for doing things like this, but it will be less obvious if someone else does so. About a month ago, after a similar situation, George Limpert sent many TI-Calculator Website owners a "Standards for fighting against piracy" which is available for viewing in the URL above. I don't think it's perfect - I don't think there is a perfect solution. It's an important issue that should be discussed, and I'm eager to hear what other people have to say about it, and what they offer as solutions.

Now it's time for Nick Disabato's Weekly History Lesson(TM). Back in the day when Germany was economically in the crapper in the post-WWI days, lots of big government types got together and decided that a League of Nations was needed to maintain world order and keep anybody from getting too far out of line.
Flash forward twenty-two years (I could be wrong on the exact date).
Adolf Hitler goes crazy-like all over Europe. The League of Nations reacts by writing a very sternly worded letter to crazy old Adolf stating something to the effect of "Please do not take over our continent. We don't like you, you mean, bad man."
Flash forward to 1945 (I think this six years after, is anybody counting by now?). The UN is established, encompassing almost all the world's nations; with a military force that can be used in peacekeeping efforts, "police actions" in the case of Vietnam/Kosovo, and (Heaven forbid) wars.

George's agreement helps a lot in establishing what TI sites should do in terms of preventing code theft, like establishing a UN of sorts :). But IMHO, since all (afaik it's all) the major TI sites already HAD in place measures taken to prevent piracy (at least I would hope so), was it really necessary? I know that if I were archiving stuff a year or so ago on a TI site, I wouldn't let a ripped-off game get into my archives if I had control over it. It's just common sense. Back when "site wars" were fierce(r), others would criticize you for doing such a seemingly inane thing. This article was mainly posted to create even more of a united front against the P word than what already exists.
I believe that as long as all the major sites agree that they won't let pirated games into their archives (which is already established), it eliminates the need for such an agreement. Each site can take its own steps to prevent pirated games from getting in their archives, ban the offenders in question on their respective IRC channels, etc. Each site/channel is different, and they might have a different way of going about doing things. Sorry to shoot down George (or what also seems like what two major TI sites are supporting), but that's just the way I feel. As for ticalc's official measure, I have no say in whether or not we would support such an agreement. You'd have to ask the Higher Powers Up There about that; this rambling is all my misguided opinion; and I'd support any decision that ticalc makes in regards to anti-piracy.
It's great that people like George are wising up to the fact that this is a problem in the TI community. It doesn't look like it'll go away anytime soon, and we can't be lax on anything like this. I just felt that it had to be beaten into everyone's heads once again, now that Hays is on its "comeback." Thanks for listening to my rant. I'll go now.

--BlueCalx

I'm glad that ticalc has taken a stand against hays and program piracy... they seem particularily interested in copying programs from small groups and individual people. visit the message board at basm.org to see an ongoing discussion about hays.

I don't see why this is such a big deal. It seems to me, that a position on anti-piracy is a no-brainer. Why is ticalc.org making such a big deal about it? You are just adding more fuel to Hay's little fire...

You're right it should be a no-brainer. Unfortunatly, some people think it's still okay to do piracy (like Hays.) I have a webpage up (follow the link up top) about anti-piracy. Hopefully this, NPO, Dimension-TI, Ticalc, and other groups' webpages will help bring Hays and piracy down (or at least reduced a lot.)

Adam Curtis

You can thank me for the title later. :D

(Testing, testing...)

Ahh...yes. Sorry 'bout this! I forgot your name from IRC!
-Adam

Yes, anti-piracy is a no-brainer. The other sites had accepted an anti-piracy agreement as such drafted by George Limpert, and so we decided to do something similar, although sort of drafting up our own agreement.

<Hays>
Kirk retires. Yay, there's no archiver to keep us from posting our lame operating system. Let's post it.
</Hays>

Apparently they don't realize that we DO have two archivers and that we are still as much against them as before. This is basically to drill that into their thick skulls :)

--BlueCalx

A simple e-mail would have also done the trick.

We all probably pirated something sometime by not registering shareware or whatnot, but that's not as bad as what Hays did releasing games he stole under his name. Ticalc maintains a very good policy.

What constitutes calculator piracy anyway? I am not aware of what the Hayes company did, but it seems as if they took other peoples programs and changed the credits to read Hayes company. I'm wondering, is it piracy to borrow some code from a BASIC game becuase it excedes ones programing abilities, even if the theme of your game is entirely different? What about looking through someone elses code and developing original code that does something almost the same thing. What constitutes piracy?

It is common curtesy and practice in the calc community to give a "thanks to" in your documentation to anyone whose code you really studied and learned from, or whose code you used.

Borrowing code is fairly common, and unless the author asks people not to, is not an issue. What is an issue is when people modify a program just a little bit, then release it as their own, or worse, just change the author's name and release it as their own.

This isn't a multibillion dollar industry--we're all mostly students having fun. It's about learning and having fun, and that's why none of my programs are edit-locked. In fact, I wrote certain ones (Gradebook, for instance), to be very portable--both for me, and for others.

Hays, however, has just been changing credits. If you want to borrow code from another program, and you are wondering if you have permission, just ask the author. That'll ease your conscience, and you'll usually get a nice responce from a friendly programmer who is flattered you like his code well enough to reuse it.

Well, some good news is that Hays is gone (at least for awhile.) He either killed his page or someone hacked it. Either way I'm glad. For more information follow the link above.
Adam Curtis

I know what happen. Not too proud of it though.
Matt H.

Man..His page is messed up...I guess I wont release my pirated game :-)
Just kidding...I dont even know how to program yet........