On Sat, Jan 25, 2003 at 02:56:44PM -0000, Andrew Crystall wrote: > Legally, it's unnaceptable.
It would be acceptable to anyone who placed rational, scientific debate above matters of profit. If the publishers of _SA_ valued scientific debate more than championing their environmental cause or making a profit, then they would not have made such threats. > In some ways, especially in a case like this. You lost me with this sentence. > Give a detailed rebuttal, yes, but don't reprint the entire > article! You can respond without printing their entire article. You could respond without quoting what you are responding to, but it is not the best way to respond. You'll notice that when I reply to your messages, I usually include most of your text in my reply. That is the best way to make sure that your comments are clearly presented, and makes it absolutely clear what point of yours I am replying to. Lomborg did the same thing. I think it is a good disciplined and efficient way to discuss and debate. It might even be called a scientific approach. > If they don't protect their copyright, they lose it. If SA consistently sued only people who reprinted their articles in entirety without interspersing detailed commentary and discussion, they would be protecting their copyright. Not threatening Lomborg in this case where he was quoting the article *ABOUT HIS WORK* is not likely to weaken SA's copyright claims. If someone posted an SA article verbatim on their website, without commentary, then there is an argument for protecting their copyright. > I CERTAINLY don't like the way that aspect of copyright law works, but > that IS THE LAW at present. > They're a business. Unless they protect their copyrights they won't > HAVE any profit. It's black and white from where I'm standing. The law isn't as black and white as that. For example, the US Constitution grants Congress the power "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" Key words being "promote the progress" and "limited times". It is clear that a limited time monopoly is meant to be granted as an incentive to promote progress. And yet the copyright term continues to be extended in the US, and RETROACTIVELY. How can extending the copyright term on a work, decades AFTER its creation, from 75 years to 95 years, provide an incentive to the creator? It cannot. And yet the Supreme Court recently upheld the Sonny Bono Act despite Lawrence Lessig's challenge on these grounds. (For more information on this: http://tinyurl.com/4vut ) The point is that copyright law is NOT black and white. There is wiggle room for anyone with sufficient motivation, and that wiggle room has historically favored the corporations and copyright holders over those who wish the work to be in the public domain. In short, if scientific debate and ethics were important to SA's publishers, they could surely find a way to avoid threatening Lomborg's completely legitimate response to their article, and still run their business effectively. -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
