Quote:
Originally Posted by HansTWN
Yes, we have to change with digital items. We have to change our attitudes. What copyright grants is the exclusive right to make copies. You can make a copy --- but that copy is illegal, it shouldn't be allowed to exist (fair use exceptions aside).
|
Stipulated. But that doesn't make the second copy "theft," any more than breaking into someone's house and smashing their TV is "theft." Different type of illegal activity.
Quote:
|
I think this "I take one but they still have the original left" argument is an excuse.
|
No, it's a major part of the objection to "it should be treated like physical property."
Physical property can only be used by a limited number of people at a time--often one. If you make a chair, you can sit in it, or someone else can sit in it. (I suppose if you're very good friends, both of you can sit in it.) If you make a book, you can read aloud to six people, or a dozen, or, a good loudspeaker, to several thousand at once.
When you no longer want someone else to use your chair, you can take it away. When you no longer want someone to use the ideas in your book, you can't to much about that except maybe hope their memory is limited.
Quote:
|
You take one and you wind up with something illegal on your hands. It is much easier to take than physical items, but for the "taker" it is the result is the same. Only the impact on the other side is different.
|
The question is, why is it illegal? It's not illegal to watch someone exercising, and then do the same moves for your own benefit, even though you're copying something they may have created. You haven't deprived them of anything. What makes "words written on paper" so much different from "movements done by the body" that one is legal to copy and one isn't?
(Semi-rhetorical question. I have answers; I don't know what your answers are.)
If I take away your chair, you no longer have a place to sit. If I make a copy of your book, what do you lack?
The common answer is "a sale," but you didn't have a sale before, and me wanting a copy is not the same as me being willing to pay for it. If I wasn't going to pay for it, what do you lack? Why is it more moral to read my friend's copy instead of making a copy for myself?
Note: that has nothing to do with keeping a copy, or distributing it. What's inherently wrong with the *making* of a copy? Who is harmed by it, and how?
(Again: I have my answers; I don't know what someone who thinks "copies are theft" would think.)