Quote:
Originally Posted by Sonist
It isn't so black and white. The body of law is an evolving one. And the evolution is often effected through disobedience and challenges to existing law. This goes from Prohibition, to civil rights, to intellectual property.
When the law runs against common sense, it becomes widely ignored (think state sodomy laws.)
I'd say, some of the aspects of recent intellectual property legislation, do indeed run against common sense, and stifle innovation.
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Sure. I never meant to imply that copyright law hasn't changed since 1793. Obviously, it
has evolved. Disobedience plays a part in that (especially, as you said, in the case of Prohibition). But take Prohibition as an example: Were the people violating Prohibition
within their rights to do so? Was it actually an
unjust law, or merely an easy one to violate?
I think the same thing is in play here. The current copyright laws are stupid in some respects (e.g., protecting a work for far too long), but I think you'd be on very shaky ground if you said the authors and publishers didn't have a right to be protected at all. That's the position that The Pirate Bay represents.
It's one thing to free your own information, if you created it. It's quite another to declare "Information wants to be free!", and to free
someone else's information without their consent. That's what The Pirate Bay has been willfully -- even merrily -- facilitating.