[plug] Re: "stealing"?

[James Elliott]

The reason copyright laws exist is partly so that the community as a whole
can share one human's contribution to the advancement of man.

Without copyright people would either be tempted to keep their discoveries
to themselves, or spend a disproportionate amount of time and money, thus
putting up the cost of the product, in trying to encrypt and camouflage
their source code.

Who would bother writing a novel if they were not gong to get paid for it?
Are you saying the world would be better off with no books?

James Elliott
----- Original Message -----
From: "Russell" <russells at plug.linux.org.au>
To: <plug at plug.linux.org.au>
Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2002 11:42 AM
Subject: Re: [plug] Re: "stealing"?


> On Sun, Nov 17, 2002 at 10:53:33AM +0800, garry wrote:
> > Using the same logic, I paraphrase..
> >
> > The notion of powered flight did not always exist. To include it as a
> > given in a statement which is presented as an immutable truth is to beg
> > a couple of questions.
>
> This is not a great analogy, for a couple of reasons.
>
> . Powered flight could exist without any laws regarding flight or
> power, or laws regarding taking friends along for free on a flight
> that you paid for.  Copyright only exists because there are laws that
> make it exist.
>
> . If you take a person on a flight, something has been lost by the
> provider of the flight: the ability to take someone else.  This loss
> occurs regardless of the existence of laws that prevent you doing so
> or not.  In contrast, making a copy of a copyrighted work without
> permission does not directly involve the loss of something by the
> copyright owner.  In the current legal situation, the copyright owner
> loses the ability to charge for the copy, but that is an effect
> entirely created by copyright law.
>
> I agree wholeheartedly with Colin (in the message to which you
> replied) that I'll respect copyright law because it is the way that
> we've currently arranged our society.  However I think that that
> arrangement is far from perfect, and history shows that copyright is
> not necessary in order for people to produce great works (eg
> Shakespeare, da Vinci).
>
>