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?
yes.....infact it's copyright and trademarks that mostly protect the GPLs principles. Ahh but open source came from acadamia, where it all began as BSD style licensing, where people really just wanted to share knowledge anyway. But then we get back to the argument of richeousness in the software world.....
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?
And some people who can't afford it will always steal it anyway. Smart businesses remove these barriers (actually competitive capitalism seems to do that) and make it less of an issue with time. I think you'd never get put in jail and fined 1000s of dollars for sneaking into a baseball park.
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) 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?
haven't seen a movie in the theatres in years, or had cable for that matter. But I'm down to buy DVDs out the wazoo because I like movies, just not commercials. On the same token as your argument though, it's about the same as how much people hate the cop sitting at the side of the road pulling people over for driving 32 in a 30 (maybe that's texas.....here it seems to be 45 in a 30). Don't they have better things to do then bust people who are stealing something that costs nothing?
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, 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).
Nobody does. I think it's kinda like drugs, where the big rings certainly nobody will argue with supressing, but fining and arresting people by snooping on them subversively will never be accepted by an enlightened populace. -T -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
