[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

But that's exactly what you're trying to describe, as a result of creating and enforcing better document security. I say you're over-reacting, as most people do, to the idea of better security and enforcement, whatever the goal... while ignoring all of the examples of laws and enforcement around you that have not brought the world to a crashing halt.

I thought the claim was "we need more laws, which will more severely restrict people's ability to share information with each other?" If the current ones are sufficient, then no, obviously, the internet will not crash from them.

Also, I said internet, not "world." The world exists just fine outside of the internet. And vastly more severe laws wouldn't kill the internet, just the WWW. The data exchange would jump back to private FTP, torrents, newsgroups, and email--and if that didn't work, private phone-in networks would reappear. DNS isn't the only way for computers to talk to each other; it's just a convenience for large-scale activity. We had an active internet, complete with pirated data of several varieties, long before we had IP addresses and URLs.

You have completely dodged the question of "how would I, individual user, benefit from this enhanced document security?" Would my data be more secure; would I have better tools with which to control who uses it and how it's used? Or do your enhanced laws only benefit corporations and their subjects?

To your credit, it seems to be a natural reaction to the subject of law and control (I'm sure it's biologically based, though I suspect a social component is also at work). That's primarily why laws and enforcement have to be documented, in order to provide the trackable evidence, checks and balances that prevent it's getting out of control.

We have laws, checks and balances. Some people are claiming they're not sufficient to deal with the problems--without being willing to identify the harm they want to correct.

By the way: All of this discussion about the value of laws, etc... is Let's try to get back to the subject of entitlement.

Certainly. The author of the blog post that inspired this thread was ranting about the "entitlement" of readers who believe they have some kind of right to be entertained without paying the producer of the entertainment.

However, it's a rather entitled view of the author--and media companies--to believe they have a right to payment from every person who experiences their products. That's never been the way entertainment worked.

Certainly, payment has never been mandatory to the creator of the entertainment. I own thousands of second-hand books. Most of them I paid for (some were gifts); none of them gave royalties to the author. Why should I suddenly be paying the author for everything I read?

We aren't yet at a tech-point where it's as easy to scan books as it is to rip CDs... but we're close. When we get there, will authors insist that they deserve payment for people scanning their own secondhand books?

I find the "1 purchase = 1 reader" concept just as loaded with entitlement as "If it's available somewhere, I shouldn't have to pay for it." I believe that finding a middle ground between these two stances is perhaps the key issue in copyright reform; any new laws or social norms are going to need to strike a balance between those two extremes.

Right now, most people are sorting out that balance on their own--some decide it's okay to download if they own a physical copy already; some only share data with close friends & family members; some exhort people they share with to also buy content by the same creators; some only share content tied to physical devices (like libraries loaning out kindles with books on them).

Some people, of course, are jerks about it. OTOH, some authors are jerks as well; the entitlement game runs both directions.