At 12:41 PM 10/9/2002 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >[...] > If Ayn Rand was still around she'd probably SHOOT anyone who napster'd > a copy of one of her novels or movies. If I use photoshop without paying > for it for awhile, I openly call that THEFT. Because that's what it is. > THEFT. Private property ... like it or lump it! :)
You can call it "theft", if you like, and the Napsterites can call it "freedom", but you're both being deliberately imprecise, so as to ride the coattails of an argument you're unable to make (or win) head-on. As several people have pointed out, theft has a traditional (and relatively precise) meaning, which doesn't include the making of copies without a copyright owner's permission. Stealing a copy of Photoshop means walking out of CompUSA with the CD hidden under your coat. Infringing Adobe's copyright would be a better way to describe what you're doing if you make a copy of someone else's Photoshop CD (whether you use it for even 10 minutes - or not at all). Both of those activities - theft and copyright infringement - are currently illegal in the United States, though copyright infringement isn't necessarily criminal. Both activities involve interfering with what the law currently defines as another person's property - but the scope and nature of those property rights are neither divinely inspired nor unchangeable. Our local governments' definitions of property and property rights depend a lot to do with what our current ideas are about what sorts of people and what sorts of activities deserve to be compensated, and which don't. Now, the fact that there's a lot of politics involved in the decisions about who gets paid when doesn't mean that it works out very well for each of us to decide on our own which laws we're going to follow and which we're not - things go a lot smoother if we can count on each other to act within the guidelines we've agreed upon, and to change the guidelines if they're stupid instead of just ignoring them. So if you want to say that people who infringe copyrights are lawbreakers (just like people who drive too fast or don't report all their income or don't tell the Man about all their guns), you'll get no argument from me. But if you want to call them thieves, you leave me wondering what's so weak about your position on the issue that you're trying to hide behind distortions and misunderstanding. -- Greg Broiles -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PGP 0x26E4488c or 0x94245961 --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Use e-gold's Secure Randomized Keyboard (SRK) when accessing your e-gold account(s) via the web and shopping cart interfaces to help thwart keystroke loggers and common viruses.
