From: Austin Ziegler Date: 2007-03-23T21:17:13+09:00 Subject: Re: free pdf ebook On 3/23/07, Chad Perrin wrote: > On Fri, Mar 23, 2007 at 03:36:35AM +0900, Austin Ziegler wrote: > > Nah. It's a bikeshed to the nuclear power plant of intellectual > > property discussions in general. > Speaking solely for myself here . . . > > Since I have an (admittedly non-mainstream) interpretation of the ethics > of "intellectual property" (note scare-quotes) that is decidedly not on > the side of counting it as "theft", I find that simply distinguishing > between theft and copyright infringement is the best compromise I can > generally come up with between ignoring the subject because it's > off-topic and refusing to let a bit of FUD go unchallenged. I don't > like to let such FUD go unchallenged, of course, because unchallenged it > becomes a meme, and propagates. Not my idea of fun. I note your scare quotes. They're a bit of a silly thing to put in because the United States and other jurisdictions *have* defined intellectual property. We can disagree with the implementations as they stand, and I think that most modern computer scientists disagree with the current implementations. HOWEVER, I think that "theft" is still an appropriate word as relates to illicit e-books. You are depriving an author of a sale to which they would otherwise be entitled and are therefore denying them income to which they are entitled. Like it or not, we *must* have some legal regime for protecting the intellectual work and output of people whose skills are best suited that direction. That's why there's three different regimes (expressions : copyright, inventions : patents, and brands : trademarks) although all three regimes have been badly stretched beyond what is reasonable and rational into things which provide effectively perpetual monopolies without sufficient benefit to society in return. It's the lack of benefit to society which is the problem here with the current definitions, not the existence of the regimes for protecting the intellectual work and output. -austin -- Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com * http://www.halostatue.ca/ * austin@halostatue.ca * http://www.halostatue.ca/feed/ * austin@zieglers.ca