Quote:
Originally Posted by meeera
And hard cases make bad law.
Is it really that necessary, in this forum about ebook DRM, to handwave about the slippery slope towards family murder? That's all I'm saying.
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Couple different issues.
1. No one (well, no one that I take seriously) is claiming a slippery slope there, they are merely making the legitimate reductio ad absurdum argument that the statement about "doing whatever they want in their home" doesn't settle the matter, and the real matters of fair use, value of copyright to society, etc, still need to be directly addressed.
2. I was actually writing because I thought your "common sense" plea was applying to the handling of copyright matters. I see now that it was applying to the use of analogies, so never mind, I'll propose an alternate response:
2A. By trying to make a "more common sense" analogy, you risk going down the path of thinking that the matters are equivalent. Physical property of any kind is not the same as intellectual property and the rights and restrictions concerning each SHOULD NOT be considered analogous.
It's the same point I've repeatedly tried to make elsewhere about not confusing "books" with "ebook" just books someone chose names with 4 letters in common. The rules of one concern the cost, sales and transfer of paper and ink and glue, and it's incorrect to try to equate those rules with digital ephemera. IOW, ebooks shouldn't be thought of like paper books, and if they shouldn't be thought of as paperbooks, they certainly shouldn't be thought of as chickens, etc.
So the only value I see in analogies here is to illustrate mistakes in arguments, like "anything is OK in my home" argument, NOT to try to claim that what works in the analogy will work for IP matters. If they ever do share elements that work the same, it's coincidence, and the exception, not the rule by which other rules must necessarily be made.