Larry Garfield wrote:
copyright infringement is NOT "taking something
without paying for it". Copyright infringement is duplicating "an expression
of an idea that is fixed in a medium" without the permission of the copyright
holder. Money doesn't enter into it.
If the licence under which the work was released stipulates payment,
money does become an integral aspect of any infringement.
If copyright infringement were "taking something without paying for it", then
anyone who's ever installed PHP is guilty of copyright infringement unless
they sent Rasmus a check. That is, of course, nonsense.
This is a nonsensical comparison, because installing PHP is not an
infringement of copyright. The PHP licence specifically grants the right
to use and distribute PHP, as long as certain conditions are met:
http://www.php.net/license/3_01.txt
A great many people -- myself included but also the Creative Commons folks,
the FSF, many open source developers, and many others -- believe the current
system of copyright law to be fundamentally flawed. Not that we shouldn't
have copyright, but that the current form of copyright is broken. A work
restricted for an entire generation after the original author is
dead? "Digital Restriction Management" software that makes even Fair Use a
felony? Retroactively extending copyright terms? Making experimentation
with either art or technology either prohibited or prohibitively expensive?
Yes, broken.
These are excellent points, with which I basically agree.
And the rank-and-file artists and authors of the world do not benefit from
perpetuating that lie. The current direction the law is moving, toward more
restrictions on the exchange of information, is bad for anyone who isn't
Robert Iger or Britney Spears. That's why it is important to confront and
correct that lie. It must be corrected before copyright can be sanely
reformed to benefit the public (its supposed goal) and original
artists/authors, not a select few mega-corps.
Unfortunately, the tactics used by pirates are disproportionately
harmful to rank-and-file artists and authors. I don't see the pirates
simply going away if and when copyright law is amended.
At no point have I said that copyright infringement is not illegal.
At no point have I said that copyright infringement is a good thing.
At no point have I encouraged people to engage in copyright infringement.
Thank you for clarifying that.
I highly recommend Larry Lessig's book "Free Culture":
http://free-culture.cc/
You can even download it free, not for money, legally, without it being
copyright infringement. How about that.
That's because he has released it under a Creative Commons licence.
However, if you copy it and sell it or use in some other way for
commercial gain, you break the terms of the licence.
When somebody distributes copies of my eBooks to others, they break the
terms of the licence. They also deprive me of income, as do bit torrent
sites that assist in that distribution. It might not be stealing in a
strict legal sense, but it results in financial harm to me. So money
does frequently come into it where copyright infringement is concerned.
David Powers
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