Quote:
Originally Posted by carld
I asked this question of a friend of mind. She said, from what she understood, all copies of the Koran are sacred, so deleting an ebook version would in-fact be the same as burning one. I'm skeptical, but *shrug*.
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(Just re-read what I'm about to post, and want to prefix it with this is just train-of-thought-meandering, not having a dig at you or your friend, given you have no visual or audio clues to my intent, just the words)
So... going on your friend's understanding, if you back your data up, including your books, and use some kind of cyclical backup routine, would overwriting the backups that include the koran count as destroying a copy?
If so, surely the people who were protesting against one person organising a koran burning day would be better off directing their energies at all the companies that sell/offer online copies of the koran? It is still quite common for companies to overwrite backup tapes on a regular basis, and even get rid of them when they fail.
And on top of that you have all the companies out there who aren't involved in the book industry in any shape, but who have staff who keep electronic copies of the koran on the network, which will then get backed up, and at some point overwritten, and quite probably deleted when that person leaves.
(We were having a similar discussion to this at work the other week, not about book burning vs book deleting, but how people's perceptions of the physical world informs their perceptions of the electronic world, even to the point that it becomes a major hindrance; and how using physical world analogies hasn't actually helped matters in the long run.)