On Monday 30 July 2007, tedd wrote: > Our entire legal system is built on allowing (granting permission) > certain actions and not allowing (not granting permission) other > actions. > > You do not have permission to steal. And if someone has not granted > you the permission to use their whatever and you do use their > whatever, then that's stealing. So jay-walking (illegal, you do not have permission to do it) is now stealing, because it's something you're not granted permission to do? > >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. > And, I doubt that the organizations you site actually agree with you. I have personally spoken to both Larry Lessig (Creative Commons) and Richard Stallman (FSF) on the subject, and feel confident in saying that both agree with the distinction. Lessig doesn't feel it's an issue worth pursuing when there are bigger fish to fry. I respectfully disagree. > >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? > > What about descendants of the author? When anyone dies, their > descendants have a rightful claim on their parent's assets -- it been > that way since the dawn of mankind. Do you think you know better than > the practice of thousands of generations? Actually no, property law didn't really come in until civilization, some 5000 years ago, which is rather small on the scale of "dawn of mankind". And copyright didn't exist until perhaps 5 centuries ago in England, and covered just publication, and was for less than 20 years. Copyright being long enough term for inheritance to matter is less than a century. Over the scale of human history, unrestricted information flow has been the rule, not the exception. But what you're suggesting is that legalized extortion should be inheritable. Copyright is, fundamentally, legalized extortion as a means of "promoting the progress of Science and the Useful Arts". Do you keep paying the guy who built your TV every time you watch something on it? Do you keep paying the company that built your house every time you move? Do you pay your teachers from college every time you use something you learned there? Do you pay your dentist every time you eat? > >And for that, I am accused of having no morality and values. > > I don't think anyone has accused you of that, but saying what you > have, leaves us with the obvious conclusion that you don't recognize > copyright infringement as stealing -- and that does cast a long > shadow as to morality and values. I will simply leave the above snippet in place, as I think it speaks for itself. > tedd > > PS: I said I wouldn't get back into this argument, but your claims > are just absurd. This from the man who just claimed that perpetual copyright for all decedents of an artist was a fundamental part of human existence for as long as they've been humans. Can we stick to facts when making logical arguments rather than completely made up nonsense? -- Larry Garfield AIM: LOLG42 larry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ICQ: 6817012 "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it." -- Thomas Jefferson -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
