[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [nafex] Copyrights, online or pirate



I thought I had said my piece on this, but one more point (at least) needs to 
be made.

If we grow apples or bananas, we feel we own the fruit.  Yet the fruit 
produces itself, with more or less assistance from us.  No one objects to 
buying gasoline, which is found in the ground, or say coal, which is marketed 
in a relatively unchanged shape.  Yet the people who profit from legal 
ownership of these things have done nothing to create them.  Intellectual 
property, art, journalism, and so forth, exist because of the creative force 
of the individual involved.  If I write a poem, all society can lay claim to 
is the history of language that brought me to this point.  If another 
language had evolved toward me, I might express the same concept, feeling, 
insight, whatever in a poem in that language.  

The issue here is ownership of what one creates.  One does not create 
information--it is out there.  Anyone can re-write anything someone else 
wrote, for example, and not infringe the least.  (Well there are dubious prac
tices about proprietary information in business, but they are not germaine 
here.)
The fact that people want to copy or repost material wholesale, without 
giving them a new form, is evidence that the author or creator has created 
something of value. if material is written well, it may be that no one else 
could have written it that way, of course.  (I talk about writing as it is my 
main field, but we could talk about  a photograph or a sculpture or a movie 
the same way.)  That is all the more reason to respect the creator.  

The issue has been couched so far in economic values, which seems to be the 
only values the government and most people respect.  But there is a right per 
se, in my opinion, of the creator to control the disposition of his/her work. 
 This is sometimes respected by law in the USA; sometimes not.  The law sets 
minimum standards for behavior.  Honorable people think butter of themselves 
than seeking to do the maximul allowable harm.  They want to do the most 
practical good.  And sometimes they want to do good even when it is 
inconvenient. 

DH

-------------------------- eGroups Sponsor -------------------------~-~>
Big News - eGroups is becoming Yahoo! Groups
Click here for more details:
http://click.egroups.com/1/10801/0/_/423498/_/976801151/
---------------------------------------------------------------------_->