Penforhire: Thanks for pointing out that Giggleton's argument has merit even though you (and I) don't agree with it. People on various sides of the political equation are fond of yelling
Marxist and
Socialist as epithets, as if someone who believed in those ideas were as objectionable as a racist. But there ought to be as many theories about property and theft as there are minds to conceive them. Personal opinion is not the same as law, nor are divergent points of view a threat to law.
What I find offensive is the OP's decision to make public the names of the people who take the poll. The action might be innocent, but it
looks like the strategy of a someone who hates those who engage in piracy and wants to get them in trouble by publicly listing their names.
I'm opposed to piracy except in the strictest fair use sense (as a supplement to active ownership), but I'm not taking the poll on principle even though I'd have nothing to lose. I don't think it's charitable to expose other MR members whether they knowingly take the poll or not.
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The idea of our having the right to copy the property we own is one that publishers would like to see made illegal, particularly since digital property is potentially permanent if stored and copy-protection-free.
But isn't that part of the reason media and formats are always changing? You might buy a digital copy of a book now, but technology-based companies will try to make certain the copy or its format is either unreadable or undesirable in five to ten years' time. Isn't that what happened with vinyl, CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray to a lesser extent? Intellectual property seems a bid for controlling content beyond personal ownership. It becomes more important as controlling physical media becomes irrelevant and controlling accessibility becomes impossible.