Quote:
Originally Posted by Pulpmeister
Perhaps those who think that "culture" should be free don't actually produce anything themselves that anybody would want to steal.
If you want to read a novel, you've got three honest choices: buy one; write one yourself; or confine your reading to bona fide free out-of-coypright books from legitimate sources such as this forum.
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Nothing is "free" Why, the power to run these ereaders depends on the sun continuing to do what it does for goodness sake. Do you not think the sun deserves to be compensated?? I'm being serious here, I am not anthropomorphizing the sun, I am simply saying that the sun is a physical presence in this universe we call constructed reality and we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we simply assume that the sun is not trying to communicate.
Should we be discussing these novels you speak of, and leave biographies and other historical accounts out of the copyright discussion? I would be the first to say that drawing the line between nonfiction and fiction is probably impossible but I think we can safely assume that if an author calls their "book" a novel then we should take them at their word. For theoretical purposes I would have to say that fictional narratives should be under some sort of compensatory protection unto the creator, simply because everybody needs to eat.
This protection should not be automatically granted upon the works creation however, we have been under such a system for a decent bit of time and it seems to make many people angry.
Everything is valuable however, everything is a record of the culture no matter how insignificant you might think any "piece" of text is to the advancement of the culture at any "point" in time.