How computer piracy differs from theft I REFER to the comments on copyright and piracy issues by Mr Kelvin Lim in "Why turn blind eye to software piracy" (ST, Jan 10) and those by Mr Sebastian Tan in "Fight piracy by pricing software fairly" (ST, Jan 13). My reply to Mr Tan's proposal on charging a fair price for computer software is that the term "fair price" for computer software does not exist. As Mr Tan has implicitly recognised, there is a fundamental difference between digital goods such as computer software, and cars or paintings. For the former, the cost of duplicating the goods is almost zero or close to the current price that is being charged by illegal vendors in Sim Lim Square. In economics, where two or more consumers can consume as cheaply as one , without reducing the benefit to anybody, any attempt to charge a price beyond zero will not maximise social welfare. There will always be people who are only willing to pay what the Sim Lim "pirates" are charging. I agree with Mr Tan that we cannot assume that if pirated software does not exist, people will eventually buy originals. I hope that people who are fond of using the analogy that computer piracy is akin to theft of cars and paintings will recognise this fundamental difference. Once the difference is established, their moralistic arguments will be very much weakened. I am not supporting computer piracy. I believe that developers who produce good software should be rewarded adequately. I merely wish to make two points. Firstly, all these moralistic arguments that "computer piracy is theft" will not be effective in eliminating software piracy since the one who buys pirated software is not directly depriving others who may prefer originals. Secondly, even if computer-software developers lower their prices to a fair level, it will not be effective since it can never go lower than the cost of duplicating the software. We may have to find a different way of charging computer-software users for the use of digital goods. It is similar to television programmes. We do not pay directly to producers to watch the programmes. Instead, we pay them indirectly by watching the advertisements. Producers have found a method to recover the cost of producing quality programmes -- by charging for advertisements. A similar solution will have to be implemented for the sale of computer software. I believe that is something that is being studied throughout the world. KELVIN TAN TUAN WEI