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Old 02-24-2010, 12:51 AM   #89
Iphinome
Paladin of Eris
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Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: USAland
Device: Kindle 10
In what way does an infringing copy cause harm to the point of being a criminal act? Where would fair use come in? Is it a tax issue? You obtained value without paying taxes on it? What's the taxable value? Copyright is a monopoly there's no open market to set a price since there's no used data stores like there are used book stores.

In principal I don't think people should copy a whole work without permission of the copyright holder, in practice well maybe two wrongs can make a right. DRM takes away fair use rights I see no moral difference between stripping the drm yourself or downloading a drm free copy, I see no moral difference between scanning and OCRing a book you own and downloading it from someone who saved you the trouble. I believe retroactive copyright extension is unjust and have no problem ignoring it and copying freely anything that would legally be in the public domain now since that was the social and legal contract when the work was made.

No doubt the laws need updating but not to favor corporations, DMCA needs to be repealed, customers need to be treated as such not as criminals. If the old publishing model doesn't work they need to be allowed to fail and burn, someone will come up with a better model. Till things shift in favor of the consumer well it may be immoral to copy it may be actionable in civil court but i can't bring myself to condemn people who are bucking an unjust system.
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