Jeff Dooley wrote:
On 9/2/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
This is incredible....I can't believe Pirate Bay is doing
what they are doing.
I don't quite understand it either. People who cheer the GNU GPL are
cheering for copyright protection too. Setting aside the DMCA, DRM,
lawyers, and other really obnoxious MPAA & RIAA behaviours, isn't
dling content still unethical behavior?
Sorry, you lost credibility in your very first sentence when you asked
"isn't [downloading] content still unethical behavior?".
To which the simplest answer is "No", and a more qualified answer is
"Not necessarily". A more philosophical answer might me "According to
whose ethics?".
Those who unconditionally support the *AA's ethics would answer "An
unqualified 'Yes!'".
[_All_ material covered by U.S. copyright law, is copyrighted the moment
it is created by decree of that very same.
The GPL is a _license_ to use certain copyrighted material, and depends
on copyright law for its enforcement - if you don't like the license,
you can't use the material covered by that license without violating the
author's copyright.]
If I politely ask you to choose between paying for an entertainment
service, or doing without, wouldn't ethics demand you abide by my
simple request? Is it okay to sneak into the baseball park or should
you have to buy a ticket like everyone else?
Do you mean the ethics of Human nature, or the the ethics of Capitalism?
If you release a program under GPL, and somebody else "pirates" it,
aren't you going to get upset? (and by pirate, I mean copy it and
release only a binary)
Understanding the ethics of Human nature, I will not be upset. Following
the ethics of Capitalism, I will be suitably upset, depending on the
level of my delusion as to the real "value" of my "property".
If I think watching Cars is overpriced, can't I just choose to do
without? This definitely doesn't count as stealing bread to survive,
does it?
In that it is not theft (nor would you be prosecuted for theft were you
caught), no it doesn't.
My only problem with BigMedia is that they're insisting that Copyright
last forever when clearly it shouldn't. Eventually it needs to go into
the public domain. But I don't necessarily think that needs to be the
very day it hits the big screen. Oh, and yeah... the US doesn't get to
dictate the law everywhere on the planet either,
Well, there ya go. I think everyone in the thread up to this point has
made it quite clear how they feel about the behavior of the big content
producers: it seems for some to come down to an Old Testament-ish "An
ethic for an ethic".
but I don't mind
content owners taking true, and deliberate thieves to task (to a
reasonable level... obviously not hundreds of thousands of dollars).
Again, you need to stop confusing copyright violation with theft.
--
Best Regards,
~DJA.
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