On Feb 25, 2009, at 12:41 PM, Chris Miller wrote:
O.K., William, then it's not all about money.
But what's the harm in someone else "cashing in on my work and
plagiarizing it." ?
What's the harm in someone sleeping with your wife when you're out of
town? It's not like they're taking her away from you.
If your original ideas were good ones, why not let everyone take
credit for
them? Without copyright, the plagiarizers will themselves be
plagiarized.
I like that Sherwoodian logic: Steal from anybody, so that then the
thieves will be stolen from, too, so there, shows them!
I remember participating in the 1969 antiwar march in Washington. We
got there early and had front row seats on the grass, right in front
of the speakers platform, near the Washington Monument.
While the 500,000 or so arrived, they kept us interested until the big
guns, like Spock and Hoffman (actually, I forget exactly who, but the
main attractions, anyway), arrived with other people talking,
exhorting, haranguing, etc. I remember one guy got up there and told
his story of dropping out of high school and finding an unoccupied
apartment in a run-down block in Philadelphia, and being very very
angry at being told he had to leave because he was squatting there,
and he didn't have enough money and why did the rich bastard landlord
have to kick him out, etc. In the midst of my expansive antiwar
feelings and general liberal compassion toward the downtrodden who
were being oppressed by the entrenched fascist owner class, I looked
up at the guy and thought, "Get the fuck outta here, you drug-addled
commie. You wanta live there? Then pay the rent. Geez, this is about
the Vietnam War, not your pissy beef about not wanting to pay the rent."
Opposing the property rights protections of copyrights is like the
squatter in Philly. It's wanting something for free. It devalues the
article, and it devalues yourself, too. How can quality have any
intrinsic value when you don't want to give value for it?
Isn't the circulation of good ideas more important than anybody's
reputation?
No.
(and once again, Cheerskep, in our new internet world, the cost of
publication and distribution is ZERO -- a major change since the
days of Queen
Anne)
Except about a thousand dollars for a computer, an internet
connection, an internet account where you can post your work for
others to plagiarize, etc., not to mention the value of your time,
unless you don't value your own time, in which case that component is
nil.
Yes -- priestly blessing should not be for sale -- and neither
should the
intellectual's voice. (and in Luther's day, those was the same thing)
Those was?
BTW -- I'm not for revoking copyright law -- but I am for
considering its
negative as well as positive consequences. And when copyright law is
encouraging art museums to keep good reproductions of their
collection off the
internet, that's a serious problem as far as I am concerned.
Name a few names? The Chicago Institue? Any others? I don't know of
any museum that puts its entire collection on line, or even a large
part of it. Don't forget that it takes a while to prepare the pages,
link them properly so they can be accessed, etc. That means time,
money, staff work, general maintenance costs, etc. BTW, the copyright
law doesnt' "encourage" the museums to keep reproductions off the web,
other considerations do.
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Michael Brady
[email protected]
