[plug] Colin on "stealing"?

[James Elliott]

Other things that did not always exist (in the ancient days of remote
sovereign nations who inter-reacted little):

space travel
satellite communications (involving cooperation of many groups &
nationalities)
a "floating" dollar
United Nations
Globalisation
The World Bank
The "Euro" and the ECU
Russia as an individual State
Credit cards and electronic transactions
Global terrorism
etc.......
etc.......

We need to go with the flow if the system works, or change it if it
doesn't - but taking someone else's product without paying for it, whether
it be 1000 hours work in building a bricks and mortar house, or 1000 hours
work in designing and writing a piece of software, is wrong!

The person who built the house might want to clear, say $25,000 for it
(excluding cost of land and materials).
The programmer, for the same 6 months work might also want $25,000, but
instead of getting all of that from one buyer he/she can sell
25 copies at $1000 each, or
1000 copies at $25 each

So, the less pirating there is the lower the price might be.  Pirating not
only denies the copyright owner of  his/her rightful income but it has the
potential to penalise the remainder of society with higher costs, and also
having to put up with the ridiculous extremes Microsoft have been led to
introduce because of pirating.

James Elliott
----- Original Message -----
From: "Colin Muller" <colin at twobluedots.com.au>
To: <plug at plug.linux.org.au>
Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2002 9:57 AM
Subject: Re: [plug] Re: "stealing"?


> > Copyright infringement == stealing.
>
> The notion of copyright did not always exist. To include it as a given
> in a statement which is presented as an immutable truth is to beg a
> bunch of questions.
>
> I'll accept an argument for respecting copyright on the basis that,
> well, it's the way our societies currently do things, and until or
> unless we come up with something better, it's one of the things we
> observe and respect for the sake of social and economic order. I
> observe copyrights myself, for that sort of reason. But copyright is
> just one of the possible ways in which we could deal with intellectual
> property while maintaining social and economic order and producing
> mighty works of intellectual production; and some of the greatest
> works of the human intellect have been produced under conditions in
> which copyright played no role.
>
> Colin
>