The recording on a vase was in an X-File but I can't remember which one and this whole working thing is seriously cutting into my research time.

Not very chatty today. Do I have to start using emoticons that bounce around the page? Maybe I ought to make your mouse pointy screen icon change into a little dancing cat or something. Is there any end to your incessant demands for entertainment?

In my experience, the guys who bought into the whole 1990s utopian web-vision (full of free priceless knowledge, vistas of limitless unregulated commerce, all wrapped up in a human/computer, wetware bridging, William-Gibson-style 3-D cyber-future) have issues with authority (hence the "knowledge will be free" fetish), played way too many RPGs and smoked way too much dope in high school.

[I am not clear on how that relates to the dead turtle...OH, I get it now...]

It is an interesting observation, relating the problem with authority and the problem with a value exchange. What ever happened to micro-payments anyway. We were all suppose to be paying 0.01% of a penny per page view and that was all to whisk its way from here to there. Instead we have the indirect compensation of cheese puntery.

BTW - punt the cheese, please.

And this is where I lose what little geek cred I may have had by asking for an explanation of the cheese punting. I'm afraid I just don't get it.

I am actually not supposed to but can referencing this earlier discussion.

I see no cheese.

How about cheese and curling? If you take a large wheel of cheddar and push it down the ice, what is that called? I imagine that there is less damage to the toes in this game.
cm--don't worry, as far as I am concerned you are chock full o' geek cred every day of the week.

cm: exactly.

Oh. Right then. Carry on.

(And thanks, gr.)

I thought it would be interesting to check the reaction at Duke but then saw this on the university's website. Click for a bigger version.<p><center><a href="images/2006/DOOK.gif"><img src="images/2006/DOOK1.gif" vspace="20"></a></center>

Denial isn't just a river in Egypt. (I'm sorry, I had to.)

We've been over this before, but I still don't get your 'it's all stealing' point about the moral equivalence of theft and breach of copyright.

Let's take 2 scenarios:

Scenario A: Me and Juan are both dying of some nasty illness. There is only one pill which can cure this and Juan has it. Juan goes to get a glass of water and I am faced iwth a decision. I could steal Juan's pill and live, but then Juan would have to die. Or I could keep my hands to myself, die, and let Juan live, since it is his pill and stealing is wrong.

Scenario B: Me and Juanita are both dying of some nasty illness. There is only one pill which can cure this and Juanita has it. Juanita goes to get a glass of water and I am faced with a decision. I could use my magical pill- copying machine to make an exact replica of Juanita's pill and replace her pill with her none the wiser and we both live. Or I could keep my hands to myself and die, because stealing is wrong and some people think these two scenarios are morally identical. I know what I'd do.

I'm with Declan.

LOL. Micropaymants reminds me of this comic:
http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/icst/icst-6/icst-6-full.html

Penny Arcade's response:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/06/22

Seeing as Declan has given two scenarios that have nothing to do with intellectual property, only necessity, they may be comforting but they are fictions. It is not about moral equivalence. It is what the courts have held. So blert all you want that you do not get intellectual property and the courts make law but look in the mirror when you say it. You will be the only one who gets it. <p>When you take the rights of another and they have monetary value you are taking the monetary value owned by another. It is not rocket science but I understand that horses who wear blinders think no one is watching the race.<p>And I want my micro payments!

huh?

I am confused. Is your position that the courts have made a decision, so whether that decision is logical or not is irrelevant? Wasn't your initial comment complaining about people who want the law amended?

Also, I'm not sure how your claim that it's not about moral equivalence matches your last line suggesting that, if people won't respect intellectual property rights it implies that they would steal physical goods as well - how is that not making a moral equivalence between these two actions?

Finally, my scenarios had nothing to do with necessity. If you like, substitute the pill preventing death with a pill giving some kind of pleasure, the point remains the same.

---
How about another scenario (since you liked the last two so much): Let's say I happen to be good friends with high ranking politicians and/or judges and I use my influence to get a law passed (and backed by the supreme court) which says that I have a right to be paid 10 cents every time anyone rides a bicycle.

Based on your logic, you would then (apparently) be completely mystified why people might be more willing to 'steal' my 10 cents by riding a bike without my permission, than they would be to come and actually take a pile of dimes from my house.

If I was going to die on an island, I would eat the other person. Your point has nothing to do with copyright. Go check in with the cheat sheet for the other bad argument.

To change the subject, once again: perhaps cm will consent to a reader profile? Is there a cm blogspot or webpage? Embarassing article in a tabloid? Alumni news? Police report? Inquiring minds want to know!

Yeah, how about it.<p>And here's another better copyright theft analogy. You and Farmer Brown are neighbours. He raises organic chickens. He sells them to the small community. You have money and could buy his chickens but instead you sneak over in the night and steal a few hens and pick up a rooster on eBay. You sell the chickens you raise, devalue the local organic chicken market and Farmer Brown goes under financial due to the flooded local market, finally hanging himself in a coop in a foolish attempt to provide for his family through insurance fraud. You create a mega-industrial chicken raising industry from your own flock, discover chemicals make chickens grow in a third of the time with a third of the nutrition. The small community slowly starves. You call your brand "Brown's Best Birds".

... and at night, the ice wolves come.

<p><p><center><small>I want my micro payments</small></center>

gr, I will if you will.

You really are slipping, CM, with your reading of the archives.

cm--I am always agitating for more reader profiles because Alan did one on me last May, which he is indicating above. It feels very lonely and exposed to be (nearly) the only person to have bared my soul and life to the Gen X crowd. Of course, Marilyn's appeared to be the sci-fi version of her own life. But lately, my life is nothing like last year except the career and wife and dogs and cats are the same, the locality and day to day have changed quite a bit. We are closing on a little old purple house on a river in Etna, NY this week, miles from New Hampshire. OK, there you go, my life is again bared for all in it's boring glory.

Mea culpa, however there's also a wee introduction of myself flying around these comments somewhere. My locality is the only thing that's the same since this time last year. Everything else is all up in a heaval. Well, as far as a hating-to-admit-it-middle-class and soon-to-be-middle-aged insurance pseudogeek's life can be in a heaval.

"Scenario A: Me and Juan are both dying of some nasty illness. There is only one pill which can cure this and Juan has it. Juan goes to get a glass of water and I am faced iwth a decision. I could steal Juan's pill and live, but then Juan would have to die. Or I could keep my hands to myself, die, and let Juan live, since it is his pill and stealing is wrong."

I would hope your decision would be predicated on the fact that stealing Juan's pill would result in Juan's death rather than stealing is wrong. Your analogy suggests the former is a lesser concern.

Making that part of the analogy unexpectedly apt for the copytheft set.

Some of us have one track minds--it always comes back to hockey. The US college tournament grinds on, with Maine killing Harvard (Harvard had a great team this year but looked like a bunch of clowns against the Black bears--watch out for Maine in the finals). Ditto New Hampshire and Michigan State: MSU whupped 'em. Almost a shame MSU and Maine have to meet next in the frozen four: it would be a fantastic title matchup. Still ahead to play this afternoon: Cornell and mighty Wisconsin, with only four teams left after this weekend.

We saw Cornell this year - excellent game - though I still like SLU better. SLU's women are in their Frozen Four I think. I noticed we are getting NCAA hockey on the NHL Network.

"I would hope your decision would be predicated on the fact that stealing Juan's pill would result in Juan's death rather than stealing is wrong. Your analogy suggests the former is a lesser concern."

The point is that stealing is wrong *because* it would lead to Juan's death. If the net consequences of theft were positive, it wouldn't be wrong.

As for Farmer Brown, the proposed scenario is inaccurate because in real life Farmer Brown doesn't have a monopoly on organic chickens.

But say that the courts/politicians had decreed that Farmer Brown had an indefinite monopoly on selling organic chickens which he takes advantage of by charging monopoly prices for the rest of time. I break this monopoly by stealing some of his chickens, breeding them and returning them unharmed. I then undercut his monopoly prices allowing many more people in the community to afford organic chickens (what you would call devaluing the chicken market) and promoting huge growth in the spread of organic chickens and making everyone better off (except Farmer Brown, whose losses are smaller than the gains which accrue to the rest of the community).

Farmer Brown clearly did in that market because of his superior poultry husbandry. Then, as you say, you steal and conspire and destroy through some ill-conceived betterment for all through taking from the capable owner. Immoral and illegal to a six-year old.

Of course, you're right on this one Al.

Declan should put himself in the position of the innovator who struggles all his life to produce his unique product - something that exists only through his creativity - simply to have it stolen, copied and distributed by persons unknown for their profit and his detriment. Declan would be the first, I would suggest, to cry "foul" (no pun intended).

Apropos of nothing, I feel I'm about 2 years late to the game on the fact that our efforts in Afghanistan are to assist in the establishment of the ISLAMIC Republic of Afghanistan. The "death to the Christian convert" debate has recently highlighted the fact to me that the Afghan Constitution is subject to Islamic law. So, just WTF are we doing there? Assisting in the establishment of a "democratic" state where elected lunatics still consider stoning a religious convert? Hard to find much of the "New Enlightenment" in this debate. Quite frankly I'm a little p#ssed that we are putting our young people in harms way to establish a religious state where this sh#t still is happening - what about the rest of you?

Thank you on the first point. On the second, the real problem is that Afghanistan is not a country in the sense that we know Canada...except perhaps for some extreme provincialists except there are not 571 provinces. It exists as a weak association of valley folk, city folk, war lords, etc. each with a different degree of association with the nation and with the islamic religion. So the role of that constitution is a bit odd but it certainly will be used as a tool for any crank. Isn't Iraq's constitution the same?

"Declan should put himself in the position of the innovator who struggles all his life to produce his unique product - something that exists only through his creativity - simply to have it stolen, copied and distributed by persons unknown for their profit and his detriment. Declan would be the first, I would suggest, to cry "foul" (no pun intended)."

I'm not sure how constructive it is to simply assume something about someone you don't know in the slightest to bolster your argument, but your comment did make me realize that one point needs clarification.

I do think that the decision of whether or not something should be made public or sold in the first instance, should be left in the hands of the creator. But what I question is is why the creator should then be able to restrict what is done with this item, after it has been sold or put into the public domain. Is there some reason profit should accrue to the creator and not the distrbutor?

I would also disagree in the quote above that the copying of my creation had been done 'to my detriment'. Detriment implies the loss of something, where I would have lost nothing.

And while I wouldn't cry foul (assuming the rules were the same for all) in the above scenario, it would be irrelevant if I did. We don't set the laws based on whether people might cry foul if things don't go their way. Rich people might cry foul if we raised taxes on the wealthy but that wouldn't make it a bad idea.

Perhaps I could defer to someone more elequent than myself to help get my point across:

"It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs.

[...]

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.

[...]

Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody."

Thomas Jefferson about Article 1, Section 8 of the American constitution.

As seen here:
http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/6/28/05649/4034#comment-14717

Full text here:
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html

---
Pretty much sums up my thoughts on the subject.

Unfortunatlely not the end of the idea. Selective Jefferson is about as pointless as any though selective Mencken is much trendier. This question does not involve invention or idea but expression. And that is exclusive under copryright and when that exclusion is ignored the owner suffers detriment, especially including in matters of intellectual property. The market place that is protected is lost, work squandered to the lazy immoral poacher. Suffering from others doing illegal things is not things not going their way - but maybe you have some Jefferson on that point. <p>But you don't really care. You just want to take and think you are clever for doing so without care for the other who actually created the thing. Way to go.

I guess this is water under the bridge now, but I don't understand why your responses are filled with so many personal insults. Is it inconceivable to you that someone might feel that society would be better off with a much more open copyright system? Is your certainty in the obvious rightness of your position so complete that you believe anyone who disagrees with you is necessarily speaking only from a position of selfishness and/or stupidity?

Also, if you are interested in reading some thoughts from someone else who doesn't really care, I recommend this article: http://www.usdla.org/html/journal/ED_APR03.pdf

...by Stephen Downs. His piece starts on page 51.

While they are insults they are not personal Declan. We do not know each other but I still mock because I care. You are misled by the "ought to be" argument becoming the "should be" becomes "is". There is a thing in elgal theory called positivism which is the opposite of natural law. Copyright is purely a creature of positivism - the law is what it says it is and all the Boingy talk in the world by Cory and his fans will not make the law what it is not. So I don't take it personal that you disagree but I mock the ideas like I mock flat earthers.

Fair enough, perhaps we have been talking past each other the whole time. I honestly have made no attempt to comment on what the law is in this thread, only on what it ought to be.

That is fine but I can only caution you that doing so challenges as copyright is an strictly legal construct, like crime and condominiums. Without a basis in the "what is" it is hard to imagine getting to the "could be". But let us have peace between us. The great <i>Pax Declanius</i> is declared!

OK, I should just let this die (feel free not to respond) but I don't see how the use of the word 'theft' in your initial post is consistent with you taking a positivist position. People arrested for file sharing aren't charged with 'theft' are they? If you had said 'violation of copyright' (or whatever the legal term is), it would have been clearer that you were only referring to the law, not to ethics of the situation.

If you refer back to the previous thread you will see that courts have used the word theft, and rightly so, to describe the taking of an interest in property as the copyright laws provide. It is theft as theft is not a word from ethics but law.

To be clear, my previous comment was written before I saw your last one...

I will consider myself cautioned. I appreciate that copyright is a legal construct. I'm just trying to debate which construction which will lead to the best outcome for society.

Pax Indeed.

Lack of <i>pax</i> is when I call you meanie silly pants.

I actually meant my last comment sincerely (including the last line), although I can see how it looks snarky in retrospect.

You may be right, maybe we should shut the internet down. This is just too difficult!

Meanie silly pants.

Hey! Chill down.