From: Chad Perrin Date: 2007-03-24T00:00:08+09:00 Subject: Re: free pdf ebook On Fri, Mar 23, 2007 at 09:17:13PM +0900, Austin Ziegler wrote: > 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. The term "intellectual property" is more marketing than legalistic terminology. It is used to encompass patent, copyright, and trademark laws, which actually relate to three very distinct bodies of law. The term is misleading, arbitrary in its scope, and not helpful in presenting a realistic view of what these laws entail. Thus, scare quotes. It's amusing to me that you're willing to stipulate, or have even confirmed for yourself (I don't know if you have), that the US legal system at least does not in any way connect copyright infringement with theft -- and yet, you continue to assume that "reasonable" means "will consider copyright infringement to be theft". It's not. It's not legally theft, it's not theoretically theft -- it's just popularly misunderstood by certain lay person demographics to be theft, or theft-like. It's *not* an appropriate term, because it's inaccurate, and ignores an important element of theft (directly depriving the victim of the rightful possession of a measurable thing subject to natural scarcity). The author is not "entitled" to a sale: if you don't want to buy it, you don't have to. I'm not depriving him of a sale if I receive a copy for free: doing so in no way prevents me from purchasing, and the sale is not something he possessed anyway. All I am doing is, arguably, reducing the likelihood of generating some small portion of revenue in some statistically measured fashion, maybe, in accordance with his chosen business model. . . . or maybe increasing it. On the other hand, his business model is predicated upon the assumption that such behavior running counter to his business model will be prevented by men with guns. > > 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. I reject your thesis here, because you fail to support it substantively. You make a claim about benefit to society and what one must or must not do, and provide no backing for it in evidence or logical necessity. -- CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ] "It's just incredible that a trillion-synapse computer could actually spend Saturday afternoon watching a football game." - Marvin Minsky