[Gllug] Regarding priracy (sic)

[Tethys]

Mark Preston writes:

>Copyright and software patent issues are difficult issues to get 
>right in the digital age.

Not at all. They have exactly the same legitimacy that they had in
previous times. The issues haven't changed. The *only* issue is
the duration of the government endorsed monopoly. It's clear that
much over 5 years for many IT related innovations is detrimental to
society, rather than beneficial. The same is hard to argue for music,
however. The fact that technology has progressed to the point where
it's now feasible to share your entire music collection with others
hasn't changed the legality of ethics of the act, or the fact that
music has a longer shelf life than a 48K spectrum game, for example.
The duration needs to be appropriate to the subject matter. When
properly used, copyrights and patents are a *good* thing.

>Before I try and put forward a non ludicrous argument against
>copyright law I wonder Chris if you would be so kind as to give the
>group the benefit of your thinking regarding censorship and the
>internet?

Maybe he will choose to do so anyway, but these are *completely*
unrelated concepts, and I'm not quite sure why you're trying to
connect them...

Tet

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