I hesitate to reply because you sound kinda riled up, and I don't want to help you get more riled up. I just want to make a certain distinction and yes, contradict you a little. If you are really riled up, don't scroll down and read this for a while, wait until you've calmed down some. I'll try and be nice.
On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 12:59, District Webmaster wrote: > 1. When you create something, you own that creation. (If not you, then > who should? The state? Society? Sounds like a communistic idea to me.) Fair enough. > 2. It is not immoral to retain control of your creations, regardless of > how rich you are, or how much others may feel "entitled" it, or any > other reason. Also fair, unless you agree to transfer that control to someone. Once you've done that, I think you agree that you have surrendered any right to that control, but that's not really what we are talking about here. > 3. Taking something that does not belong to you is _wrong_. It always > has been, always will be. Certainly. > Which is why laws and methods and schemes that attempt to protect what > is right are a good thing. Copyright attempts to prevent theft -- it is > _always_ theft when you take something you don't own. This is where wording can get tricky. If I make a copy, it's different than stealing. If I steal your car, you no longer have a car, and I do. If I copy your car (with Ross' matter copier mentioned in a post a few weeks ago), you still have a car, and I have a car. That's not the same thing. Right now the laws or our land say that copying something without the owners permission is illegal, a civil offense I beleive. I don't see anything in the gospel that comments on copying, but the idea of benefiting from someone's labor without giving them the compensation they demand is probably covered somewhere, at least under one of the two great commandments, so you probably do still have a point. This whole debate gets confusing, some of us are talking about what is right under current U.S. law, some of us who think those laws are Wrong are ignoring said laws for the sake of discussion and are talking about what we think is Right. This makes those who are still thinking in the context of current law all upset because you are advocating things that are just plain illegal. Whereas, those who are talking about ideals without regard to current law think the others are un-enlightened and need to more brow-beating. Also some of us were debating only about the technical merits of DRM, but that didn't last long. Overall I think Mike H. made a very good but subtle point - all the RIAA sort of DRM really is is enforcing a kind of bargaining with hardware-based key management doing the grunt work. You can accept or reject their bargain. Also, there will be good technical uses for this hardware-based key managment, or in other words "DRM" technology. I did a quick search on TPA after reading his post and found this very interesting read: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/msg01684.html So by reading this, I'm again persuaded there are good techinical uses for "DRM" technology, while still agreeing that the RIAA/MPAA is greedy, though also admitting that they are only working to enfoce current U.S. laws. Bryan P.S. Anything I do or say does not represent the views of my employer in any way shape or form or however it is I absolve myself of any responsibility for dumb things I may have said or intimated about Carly. ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
