Potentially, some purchasers of an object may value it for its more immediate uses, whereas others may wish to exploit the idea it embodies in other ways. Most buyers might purchase a computer disk solely in order to make personal use of the spreadsheet program encoded on it. On the other hand, a software distributor might purchase such a disk from the original programmer for purposes of mass reproduction, thereby making the idea available to a large number of end-users. In such cases, the distributor could sell disks to buyers with an attached condition, just as our subdivision builder imposed restrictive conditions on home buyers. Typically, the distributor would require that the software program (i. e., the idea embodied in the object) could not be copied and resold by the buyer or any future buyer of the disk. Such a condition is called a copyright if the object represents the idea(s) in a linguistic or coded form; otherwise, it is known as a patent. Patent and copyright conditions may also be applied in various other circumstances. For instance, an author might apply it to readers of his manuscript-in-progress; an inventor might apply it to visitors to her property who might happen to witness her invention or her new manufacturing process.