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Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
In context, this quote is about the rights of states, not of individuals.
Having some books/movies/games, to use your scare quotes, "stolen" is inevitable in the digital world, just like in stores. One price for living in human society is that some people will manage to take other people's property, intellectual and otherwise, without their permission. I want to mildly discourage that, and we can discourage it without turning our world into an unfree hell-hole like, oh, say, Jefferson's plantation.
Check out how it works in France, where a free and open internet coexists with a more serious anti-piracy regime (warnings, with eventual possibility of service cutoff) than in most other countries. There was talk of the new socialist government repealing the anti-piracy law, but based on details found here, they are keeping it. This is about what seems in store for the US, and I don't see where my freedom of expression, or freedom to read, will be harmed. |
Cosign. The idea that the two options are either a free and open Internet or totalitarian regimentation is a false dichotomy. There is another option-that of ordered liberty and the rule of law. That's been the way of Western civilization since invention of the US constitution ( which had IP rights baked right in-the Bill of Rights was added AFTER the IP rights clause).
There is also this from the UN Declaration of Rights :
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(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
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From the POV of the UN, pirates aren't the harmless pests or "freedom fighters" as many on this forum believe: rather, they are human rights violators pure and simple.
Extending the rule of law to the Internet is going to be next step in the evolution of the Internet. Its inevitable and even better than that, its the right thing to do. We don't know how many artists have been afraid to put their work on the Internet because they're afraid it will be ripped off, but the number must surely be more than zero.