[Gllug] Regarding priracy (sic)

[Pete Ryland]

On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 03:44:06PM +0000, Tethys wrote:
> 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.

Indeed.  As Simon pointed out, the reason copyright and patent laws were
introduced was so that people would open up their inventions rather than
keep them secret.  This was to allow inventors and innovators to make money
whilst allowing the state-of-the-art to keep progressing.

In this day and age, the state-of-the-art moves much quicker, and indeed
progress is actually hindered by the current length of copyrights/patents.
However, these laws are making some groups very rich and these groups are
able to lobby for the laws to stay as they are.

> 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.

Music is a difficult case, since the price doesn't meet the cost, and the
musicians get nothing anyway[1].  And then, some music has a much longer
lifespan than other music.  In fact, the music they're trying to stop you
from copying is the very music you'll (well, the 16yo girls will) want to
listen to for two weeks and then move onto the next song.  Whilst I'm not
against commercialism per se, targetting minors is something which is not
quite right IMHO.

> >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...

Maybe he was trying to say that they are about as connected as theft and
copyright infringement.

BTW, is there a "fair use" policy in theft law? ;-)

Pete

[1] See http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/story/60991p-57008c.html
for an interesting case study.
-- 
Pete Ryland
http://pdr.cx/

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