"Rafael 'Dido' Sevilla" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Many, many misconceptions about copyright in this post... *sigh*
I assume you will enlighten us, then? > It isn't a question of fairness. The public wants there to be a lot of > good music to listen to, and also it wants this music to be available at > minimal cost. So the government institutes a system of copyright for > music, that says that for a limited time the musician can have exclusive > use of his creations so that he can find a way to make money off his > creations by restricting their use only to those who can pay him a > license for their use. Exactly. All of this, after all, is based on only one thing: control. And governments all over the world need it badly, because we are inherently out of it... > Wrong. It is because the government, whose mandate is to protect the > public interest, has deemed it more beneficial for the public to yield > some of its liberties (remember that copyright is inherently a > restriction on freedom of speech) in order that the company may add > value to the economy by creating their copyrightable works. This was the idea I was looking for. Thanks dido! > It is not really wrong in the moral sense. Only wrong in the sense of > illegal. Malo in prohibido is the legal term. The real problem with > unauthorized copying is that it removes part of the incentive for people > to create useful content, and that is in many cases a bad thing. But not all cases, right? What if instead of removing that incentive, piracy spurs it to even greater heights? And that is exactly what is happening right now, all over the world, and especially here in our debt-ridden opportunity-spoiling banana republic. >> Now is copying and proliferating/selling an installer of a piece of >> software piracy? Yes, because it essentially means you are not abiding >> by the license you agreed to that accompanies the installer > > What license? I was not given a license for the software in the first > place, much less agreed to any, meaning I DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO COPY > IT AT ALL. I am therefore in violation of copyright law. > >> -- which is in essence is taking for your own and having your way with >> something which is not yours. > > It is not taking for my own and having my way with something that isn't > mine, nevertheless. More of the IP propaganda at work here. I am > violating laws that a government created in order to motivate the > person/organization which was behind the act of creation to keep doing > what they are doing, which is bad enough, but that is hardly theft as > you imply. Chances are, I would never have gotten the installer at all > and done without it instead had it not been made available as cheaply as > it had been from the illicit channels. Indeed. Which begs the question: Why are these channels operating at all? Answer: it is because we have nowhere else to get money for our daily bread. Or so it seems, because most of us have no motivation at all to improve ourselves both for our own benefit and for the benefit of humanity. We are still enslaved by petty human selfishness. > I am not in breach of any contract. I never signed any contract. Since > I wasn't granted a license by the copyright holder, what I have done is > violate copyright law, and am liable for criminal penalties under it. Ah, that's better. Gives me another reason to turn CDs into platters. > I'm not a lawyer either, but I have tried to do some in-depth research > into this subject of copyright law, and see that some of your statements > propagate dangerous misconceptions about this whole string of legal > machinery which is complex enough without the misleading "intellectual > property" propaganda that you seem to have inadvertently swallowed. *Where* are the lawyers, anyway? But at the very least, there's you, and that's good enough. Thank you for enlightening me, at the very least. -- ZAK B. ELEP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- <http://zakame.spunge.org> 1024D/FA53851D 1486 7957 454D E529 E4F1 F75E 5787 B1FD FA53 851D -- Running Debian GNU+Linux testing/unstable. GnuPG signed mail preferred.
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