Concerning the plug-talk piracy accusation, I am not a pirate and I don't condone piracy either. Pirates are people who acquire copyrighted materials illegally and sell those copies or give those copies away free of charge. If I copy my Windows installation for later retrieval in the event of hard disk failure, I am not a pirate. If I do this for a Linux based system, I am definitely not a pirate. Furthermore, if I copy a copyrighted movie that aired on television using a Linux based server, I am not a pirate.
Where does you can only have the copy for so long come into play? Show me the law that says you can only view a copyrighted show so many times if you record it off of the air or you copy it from a legally purchased DVD. I have never heard of such a law. In fact, I have heard quite the opposite. Saying that hard drive copies, CDs, and DVDs not produced by the copyright holder are carte blank illegal is a ridiculous definition of piracy. There is a clear difference between piracy and making a private software/video collection accessible and usable. It used to be that you could make backup CDs of the installation files for Windows easily. This was legal if you purchased your copy and didn't share it with others. This was reasonable in a day and age when Windows still got distributed on floppy disks. Was it safer to purchase genuine CDs? Yes, of course. But the genuine CDs were and still are prohibitively expensive. I am not saying that it is legal to bypass the technical barrier to copying Windows install files in order to share them, that is piracy. I emphatically disagree with the notion that all copying is piracy. If people don't defend legitimate copying, this definition of piracy will probably take hold though in time. I hate that Microsoft doesn't give most people install disks anymore. You can make a backup that will install to a specific computer, but you can't make install disks. If the only thing I can put on a Linux based media server is non copyrighted material, what's the point? Yes, it is nice to have a server that can dump family photos and family movies to the television. Streaming your purchased and personal DVDs and VHS movies to hard disk seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. If this isn't legal, it should be. I have no intention of copying borrowed materials from a library. I'm being picked on for talking about media in general and I don't appreciate this. I will not be silenced on this subject for fear that it will lead to unfair and unjust laws being passed. Imagine a world where you can't even share Linux because everything has to come from the copyright holder. Maybe this kind of world will materialize if everyone shuts up. _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
