Quote:
Originally Posted by bill the smith
@HarryT
The patented drugs is a poor example - as we are seeing in Third World countries where large numbers die because they country cannot afford to pay the US for drugs.
We are seeing examples of poor countries making their own version of US patented drugs and to hell with the US.
Knowledge is the same.
Everybody in the world has access to a limitless amount of information on the Internet.
Countries which are prohibited by book publishers from reading the latest literature should be able to read pirated copies. Particularly poor countries. If you stand back and look at it, international copyright is about preventing access by developing countries to knowledge and books. Piracy is a liberating force.
Why should the US dictate what I read? Screw them.
Obama should be looking after his relatives in Kenya by making literature (and medicine) available to them for free - not blocking it by US laws.
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The amount of knowledge on the Internet is not limitless. It's growing all the time-and the reason it's growing is because *somebody* pays researchers to perform their experiments & publish their results. Just as *somebody* pays authors to write their books. If nobody pays (because 'knowledge' is free) then all we'll ever has is the knowledge we have now-and that is *definitely* not limitless.
Grow or die. That's a law of nature. Whether it's new drugs or new books, discovery/creation will stop if nobody pays for them. And then we all die.
Now if you want to advocate that the government pay for the research (or pay the authors who write the books) then I'd say you have a valid argument. Not that I think it would be practical, but I'd at least listen to the details. Your current argument I won't even listen to the details-it's based on deadly self-interest.
(I have no idea what you do for a living, but I *seriously* doubt it involves creating anything new. You might do that as a hobby, but if you do it for a living then you'd know that giving your work away means taking away your living. And then you die.)