OK, so your advice boils down to: "Be a good little drone, suck it up, admit that The Powers that Be were right (whether or not they were), and go back to whatever humdrum life they have planned for you." Yeah, that's the message I want to see universities teach.
Winston, they're waiting for you in room 101.
It isn't at all clear that he's in the wrong. It isn't at all clear that he stepped over any reasonable line. As for First Amendment issues: The First Amendment protects us from Congress and state legislatures who meddle. You know what? A public university is bound by the First Amendment, too. If U of U is a state school (and I believe it is, though a quick check of the website didn't make it clear), then they have a heavier burden than a private institution.
This simply (and repeatedly) avoids one of the main problems here: The University is enforcing its viewpoint by claiming everything as its own Intellectual Property. If you believe in IP, then what we're talking about is not "loss of support". It's outright theft.
And if you don't believe in IP, as I do not, then what we're talking about is simply legal machinations for the purpose of harassment.
Call me a cynic, but I think that most people would not produce under a system like this. You would have very few producers and many people who just take what is there and return nothing.
There's nothing wrong with some healthy cynicism.:)
Let me offer this thought, though: What if the few people who produced in an unfettered world outproduced the output in the fettered world? In other words, if freedom from software patents enables and energerizes the right people to the right extent, it could very well still be in society's interest to abolish them, even though most people would not produce.
Put another way: It's not clear that the current system yields a high output. Look at what comes out of Big Music.
That said, I am far from convinced that this wonderful state would occur. I am just equally far from convinced that it would not. It is much too early to be cutting off debate and foregoing thinking on the subject... the world is changing.
Heck, it's early morning and I'm feeling quibblesome.
Blockquoth the poster:
Thusi[
sic] is so typical of Amierican ccultural[sic] imperialism. Because the US has a law giving them freedom of speech, they assume it gives them the right to say anything about anyone
First, as an American, I view it thus: We don't have a "law giving" me freedom of speech. I have that as a fundamental and inalienable right, just as the poster does and indeed all people do. In the US, we have laws (esp. the First Amendment) that helps safeguard that right.
Second, since it is a fundamental inalienable right of all humankind, we don't say it gives us the right to say anything to anyone. It gives anyone these rights; again, they are merely better protected in the US.
Third, as has been pointed out, the First Amendment is not a total shield. Even in the US we have libel suits and slander suits. (I'm not sure we have defamation suits, per se.) Such speech, the courts have ruled, is not protected by the First Amendment. But US laws on slander and libel are generally recognized to favor the defendant, primarily because the litigant must show that the statements are untrue. Other nations (at least, the UK and so, perhaps, Autralia) have no such requirement.
Let's look at that more closely, shall we? US laws says, you can't make up awful statements about someone, publish it, ruin their lives, and get away with it. UK law says, you can't discover the truth publish it, ruin their lives, and get away with it. As far as I'm concerned, the US gets the points for this one. If you've committed some heinous act, then you're the one who's ruined your life. It's not my fault just because I make it known. If you don't want to be painted with the brush, don't do the act.
So the issue isn't quite First Amendment after all. It's the issue of venue: where will the burden of proof lie? And despite what the poster said, that is a statement about the merits of the case. If the standards for defamation differ, then of course where the trial is held will help determine if defamation occured.
He is pointing out that he has a right to own his work and sell it if he can
Ah, but what does "own" mean in the context of an idea? Can you own an idea? A process? An algorithm. Obviously, you can patent it: The state gives you an artificial monopoly, which creates artificial value and encourages other to "buy" access from you. But of course that value wasn't intrinsic, because it required the state to grant you a monopoly.
In other words, I simply don't buy the logic: "He has a right to own his work. Therefore the state has an obligation to create a legal framework in which the actions of others are restricted so as to create something he can sell."
I'm not intrinsically opposed to patents but the debate never seems to focus on the actual justification for them; to wit, to promote science and the arts. We focus on whether failing to grant patents would lead to "theft" of a thing that can't be owned at all except through the patent.
Hey, we live in a capitalist society (or at least we hope we do) where we get paid for our labor.
No, we live in a capitalist society wherein we get for supplying something someone wants at a price that someone is willing to pay. Often, that "something" is our hard work and our time. But just because you've invested your effort, time, and sweat into something doesn't mean I am obligated to buy it. If what you offer is offered by someone else at half price, the consumer will go to the other person, no matter how many nights you've agonized over your product.
The issue is, software is easy to duplicate and an algoithm, once described, is usually "easy" (meaning "possible") to implement. So in a purely free-market world, you could never make much money from an algorithm: Someone else would use your research to make whatever product, and, since they don't need to do the R&D, they'd sell it cheaper than you could.
Patents are a direct governmental intervention into the free market (take that, all your uber-Libertarians) that artificially enhances the value of an algorithm by artificially restricting supply to the discoverer. Artificial scarcity works just as well as real scarcity, in that it pushes the price up. The theory is that this actually promotes more innovation because now people can reasonably expect to make a living at the R&D.
But there is no inalienable "right" to be rewarded for hard work. It only makes sense in IP law due to the secondary effects.
And despite of what some others have said, most economists have concluded that countries/companies which have strong Patent Law/initiatives are more successful.
Don't take this the wrong way, but do you have references for that? Hard facts or, failing that, an economics study:) would be appreciated.
There is nothing intrinsic in the economic system of the US, or in fact, any industrialized nation that "work" must be rewarded. Surfing is work... it can be quite hard work. Is the government obligated to pay for you to surf? Is it obligated to force others to pay a "beach fee" to see you surf? Of course not.
I'm a little tired of people saying that the Intellectual Property laws should be left alone because society owes them a living doing what they prefer. It does not. Would a loss of copyright lead to fewer musicians? Would a loss of patent lead to fewer codec developers? It could well be so.... and so society must weigh the costs and the benefits, and set the level at a reasonable place.
But under no circumstance must we protect these people as if they had a right to the money, just because it's hard work. No one cried for the horse-and-buggy makers, either. It's a cruel fact of cold economics: Skill and hard work do not ensure success. Society doesn't have to pay to support your habits. And if the rewards aren't enough to justify the effort, do something else.
When people start shouting that Free Software is about "freedom", then I start getting worried. Free Software is a model that is useful. Drop the ideology and focus on what you are trying to accomplish.
What if the ideology is what you're trying to accomplish?
Strong Free Software types maintain that the issue is freedom... that the software model is itself a statement about human priorities. I don't subscribe to all of their philosophy, myself, but I think I understand where they're coming from. And I'm glad there is still someone out there saying, "Making money is only one human priority and, moreso, it is not the most important one."
In the end, that's what's both so frustrating and so exhilirating about the Free Software movement: It's about something... something more than hoarding and sleeping and feeding and knowing not a thing.
Without them there would have been an ever-increasing knowledge gap between the elite "haves" and the masses of "have-nots".
Um, we still have that knowledge gap. The vast majority of people who use AOL work on faith and believe in magic... they don't know much about what's going on inside their machines.
If you don't like this system, move to Cuba.
Ah, yes, that's the productive way to run a system: Force out anyone who spots a flaw, so that the system never need improve.
Whatever happened to the concept that *NO* law, contract, etc, could circumvent your Constitutional rights?
Um, exactly what Constitutional right would that be? The First Amendment does not say you can say whatever you want. It says the government cannot regulate what you say.
Historically, the courts have been very friendly toward contracts voluntarily entered into. All contracts restrict your rights somewhat, if only in the simple sense of, "By selling this and receiving X money, you give up the right to use or access this car." As long as no coercion is used to secure the contract, how can you stake a philosophical battle over it? If people didn't want to live under the restrictions of the declaration (whatever they may be), then said people simply should not have signed.
Of course, without signing, they would be barred from the viewing. Oh, well. It's not like they --- or we -- have an unmitigated, natural "right" to see the viewing.
Whenever someone throws a tantrum over a ficticious "violation" of their Constitutional guarantees, it cheapens those guarantees and makes it harder for more rational people to safeguard them when they really matter and are really under assault.
Yes, it may be good if you can increase actual readership by 10%, but if that comes at the cost of quality or even the publication itself, then it is not worth it
It's easy to say that "most motivated people in this country can gain access to the material through libraries and such". It's a bit harder to defend when you read that university libraries are currently slashing their subscriptions, precisely because the "traditional" model of publishing results in spiraling costs and diminishing returns.
You say, "It's not enough to increase readership by 10% if it destroys the publication." I ask, "What good is the current model if it forces university libraries -- forget about individual researchers -- to drop the publication entirely?"
We value the pursuit of scientific knowledge because it is a worthwhile human endeavor, not (solely) because it provides industry with better mousetraps.
Amen to that. We seem, lately, to see everything as worthwhile only if it ends in material profit... if, at the end of the day, we can buy more widgets. But focusing solely on physical satisfaction leads to an extremely hollow and unsatisfying life, ironically enough. Not all value is economic value.
And humans have done tremendous things for long periods of time even when they didn't make cold-hearted "economic sense".
In responding to a post one level up, sure, most people most of the time will have little interest in the arcana of any particular field. But free access is still important, because at least it leaves that choice -- be informed or not -- in the hands of the average citizen. Not in the publishers' hands. Not in the hands of MegaMultiContentMediaCorp. In the hands of the people who might be affected.
Why doesn't anyone seem to trust the citizenry any more? We're not the ones who broke faith.
Not only that, I'm pretty sure that the SDMI people said that they wouldn't go after any team that tried to break their encryption/watermarking system, that they were in fact authorizing them to do so for the purposes of this contest...
Ah, but read the letter: They're not upset that the team broke the encryption. They're upset that -- heavens oh heavens -- the academic team might actually publish the result. You see, as far as the RIAA was concerned, the whole Challenge was just a way for civic-minded research teams to donate their time and effort without any beneift to themselves.
It was stupid, myopic, and maybe cynical for the RIAA to attempt to construct a Challenge whose results could benefit only them and to expect anyone to conform to it. It is stupid and wrong for them to invoke the DCMA as a threat to cover up the screw-up they made.
The problem is, if you can make a perfect copy of something, with little or no difficulty or expense, you can rip off the producer of the item. There has to be some means of protecting the property rights of the producer.
Property rights should be protected. Intellectual output is not property, except through a linguistic perversion... precisely for the reason mentioned: You can make perfect copies at zero cost; therefore, the true economic worth is zero. The "value" of intellectual "property" is created solely by the state-sanctioned monopoly given to the creator.
Is that necessarily a bad thing? Maybe not. (Maybe -- it's not clear why, other than some vague moral sense, you have a "right" to profit from your intellectual exertions. It seems, to me, to make about as much sense to demand a "right" to profit from, say, breathing.) But since the value is created entirely by the people (by surrendering of their rights), one can imagine the government, perhaps, having a say in what mechanisms are used to maximize that value. To wit, copyrights and patents should exist to serve social ends.
I am continually astounded by the free-market libertarians who carp about people interfering in the "natural" market by "ripping off" the creators of intellectual output. Of course, if you really believe in the dead hand of Adam Smith, you recognize that the value of something is the price that someone is willing to pay; that is, the opportunity foregone by a purchaser. In the Digital Age, since copying is a cost-less process, the actual value of intellectual output has fallen to essentially zero.
This might lead to the End of the World as We Know It, but it's the way that free captialism will tend.
? It's just like Napster -- for every garage band song legally downloaded, there are thirty million downloads of "infringed" music.
Is that a sufficient argument to cripple hardware?
No, it's not. The presumption that I might possibly infringe is not a reason to limit me. I live in a society where one is presumed to be innocent until there is evidence of guilt. Those companies can of course go out and pursue infringers -- that's their legal right. But they have no legal right to pursue me, as I don't infringe.
Of course, "infringement" is not "theft". If you infringe someone's copyright, or their patent, you certainly trample on rights secured by law over distribution or manufacture resulting from your intellectual output -- but it isn't theft, because the infringement does not reduce your own ability to utilize the object "stolen" (because no oject is stolen).
I am not someone who says, "Throw out the entire intellectual output regime". I think that record companies have the right to go after infringers of their copyrights... but it isn't theft, it isn't "piracy" (an even more ridiculous word), and it isn't a reason for them to cripple my hardware and software. I do not infringe and I resent the implicit presumption of guilt built into DAT, CSS, regional encording, etc.
And I resent the torturing of the language to serve narrow, selfish ends.
BUT having said that after 33 years even the music is a bit old.
Um, the music was old even before the movie came out. It's just classical scores.
Interestingly, the score was almost an afterthought. Kubrick apparently hired someone to score the film. While waiting on that, he used the Blue Danube, etc., just to fill in as soundtrack, and liked it so much he kept it.
I think we shouldn't try to invent the future because we look back and just see how lame we thought it was going to be.
It's all those sad misguided creatures trying to invent the future who actually go out and do it. Sure, the reality never quite matches the conception. Ever see a house being built? Even there, there are divergences... and the future is a heck of a lot more complicated.
"... It taught us that we must create the future, or someone will do it for us..."
So now we've seen two clearly quanitative pieces of data that indicate 2001 isn't really that good
Leaving aside that you've listed two discrete facts (and not quantitative data), this assumes that the Oscars mean anything at all regarding a film's quality, a highly debatable point.
CJ Cregg: The more photo-friendly of the two turkeys gets a Presidential pardon and a full life at a children's petting zoo; the other one gets eaten.
Jed Bartlet: If the Oscars were like that, I'd watch.
Most sci-fi authors are very prostalgic, otherwise we wouldn't be reading about
telepotation, time travel and the colonization of other worlds.
Does this involve the consumption of alocohol without it traversing the intervening space?:)
Before I get zinged for nitpicking a typo, I'm just going for the pun. No criticism of the post's content intended... and isn't it content that really matters in evaluating these things?
Wow. A well-constructed, well-written, level-headed response... that unfortunately tells us nothing and is essentially useless. Apparently the intended flow of conversation is,
Poster: UD claims to be doing philanthropic work, but actually, their licensing and legalese appears to give them many options to distort or abrogate the implied responsibilities. UD employee: No, no, UD can certainly be trusted. After all, we say we can be trusted. Poster: Oh, then everything's hunk-dory then.
I am put in mind of those old Joe Isuzu commericials.
I don't want to malign UD, who might very well be intending to benefit all humankind out of the goodness of their hearts. But the fact of the matter is, legitimate questions were raised about the apparently shady way things are structured, and this "response" does little or nothing to address them.
As for the kiddie-porn comment, the gist is this: It's not that anyone expects UD to actually do this. It's that the license propagated by UD reserves the right to do, by abnegating any responsibility for what their program does... even though they will not open the source and let the user decided if the code is safe.
I think this will be an interesting test case. I hope people find a way to make a living off Open Source work, because I think it's a good idea. For a while I've felt that people are basically reasonable and will pay a reasonable fee even if something is available for free.
Since the GPL (apparently) allows people to re-post this for less, we'll get to see if people really will put their money where their mouth is. Assuming, of course, that LibraNet has a relatively convenient way to get the money to them. (I believe this lack of easy mechanism is what kills most shareware.)
If it were my code they were pirating -- and that is the correct word in this case -- I'd sue the hell out of them
Hmm. Unless they're wearing eye-patches and murmuring "Arrgh!" all the time, they're not pirates. They aren't sailing the high seas, capturing ships, sacking and pillaging small towns, etc. They are not pirates!
I'm not talking about their right to do this under the GPL or anything like that, about which I know nothing and care less. I'm talking about the accepted, but stupid, convention of equating mis-use of intellectual output with crimes of robbery, murder, and mayhem.
Yeah, I know it's a convention and it's understood by everyone. Yeah, I know it's losing battle to get people to stop accepting a bad usage with all its unconscious connotations. I just don't care: Improper copying simply is not piracy.
Well, I'm glad you're going to sit down and reverse-engineer every piece of software you buy or download, before installing. I suppose you're also going to inspect all the farms that grow your food, the plant that makes your car, etc.
I think the original poster came pretty close to hitting it squarely on the head. Note that the suggestion was not that government ban the sending of information. It was proposed that government mandate the revelation of information-mining, so that you can vote with your wallet... intelligently.
It's as easy to say "The fewer laws the better" as it is to call for a cradle-to-grave state. Both are failures and abdication of voter responsibility. What we need is the right laws, and their number will fall somewhere between zero and infinity. Though it was said 150 years ago, it's still true:
The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.
Slashdot Mirror
Winston, they're waiting for you in room 101.
It isn't at all clear that he's in the wrong. It isn't at all clear that he stepped over any reasonable line. As for First Amendment issues: The First Amendment protects us from Congress and state legislatures who meddle. You know what? A public university is bound by the First Amendment, too. If U of U is a state school (and I believe it is, though a quick check of the website didn't make it clear), then they have a heavier burden than a private institution.
And if you don't believe in IP, as I do not, then what we're talking about is simply legal machinations for the purpose of harassment.
Let me offer this thought, though: What if the few people who produced in an unfettered world outproduced the output in the fettered world? In other words, if freedom from software patents enables and energerizes the right people to the right extent, it could very well still be in society's interest to abolish them, even though most people would not produce.
Put another way: It's not clear that the current system yields a high output. Look at what comes out of Big Music.
That said, I am far from convinced that this wonderful state would occur. I am just equally far from convinced that it would not. It is much too early to be cutting off debate and foregoing thinking on the subject... the world is changing.
Blockquoth the poster:
First, as an American, I view it thus: We don't have a "law giving" me freedom of speech. I have that as a fundamental and inalienable right, just as the poster does and indeed all people do. In the US, we have laws (esp. the First Amendment) that helps safeguard that right.Second, since it is a fundamental inalienable right of all humankind, we don't say it gives us the right to say anything to anyone. It gives anyone these rights; again, they are merely better protected in the US.
Third, as has been pointed out, the First Amendment is not a total shield. Even in the US we have libel suits and slander suits. (I'm not sure we have defamation suits, per se.) Such speech, the courts have ruled, is not protected by the First Amendment. But US laws on slander and libel are generally recognized to favor the defendant, primarily because the litigant must show that the statements are untrue. Other nations (at least, the UK and so, perhaps, Autralia) have no such requirement.
Let's look at that more closely, shall we? US laws says, you can't make up awful statements about someone, publish it, ruin their lives, and get away with it. UK law says, you can't discover the truth publish it, ruin their lives, and get away with it. As far as I'm concerned, the US gets the points for this one. If you've committed some heinous act, then you're the one who's ruined your life. It's not my fault just because I make it known. If you don't want to be painted with the brush, don't do the act.
So the issue isn't quite First Amendment after all. It's the issue of venue: where will the burden of proof lie? And despite what the poster said, that is a statement about the merits of the case. If the standards for defamation differ, then of course where the trial is held will help determine if defamation occured.
In other words, I simply don't buy the logic: "He has a right to own his work. Therefore the state has an obligation to create a legal framework in which the actions of others are restricted so as to create something he can sell."
I'm not intrinsically opposed to patents but the debate never seems to focus on the actual justification for them; to wit, to promote science and the arts. We focus on whether failing to grant patents would lead to "theft" of a thing that can't be owned at all except through the patent.
The issue is, software is easy to duplicate and an algoithm, once described, is usually "easy" (meaning "possible") to implement. So in a purely free-market world, you could never make much money from an algorithm: Someone else would use your research to make whatever product, and, since they don't need to do the R&D, they'd sell it cheaper than you could.
Patents are a direct governmental intervention into the free market (take that, all your uber-Libertarians) that artificially enhances the value of an algorithm by artificially restricting supply to the discoverer. Artificial scarcity works just as well as real scarcity, in that it pushes the price up. The theory is that this actually promotes more innovation because now people can reasonably expect to make a living at the R&D.
But there is no inalienable "right" to be rewarded for hard work. It only makes sense in IP law due to the secondary effects.
I'm a little tired of people saying that the Intellectual Property laws should be left alone because society owes them a living doing what they prefer. It does not. Would a loss of copyright lead to fewer musicians? Would a loss of patent lead to fewer codec developers? It could well be so.... and so society must weigh the costs and the benefits, and set the level at a reasonable place.
But under no circumstance must we protect these people as if they had a right to the money, just because it's hard work. No one cried for the horse-and-buggy makers, either. It's a cruel fact of cold economics: Skill and hard work do not ensure success. Society doesn't have to pay to support your habits. And if the rewards aren't enough to justify the effort, do something else.
Strong Free Software types maintain that the issue is freedom ... that the software model is itself a statement about human priorities. I don't subscribe to all of their philosophy, myself, but I think I understand where they're coming from. And I'm glad there is still someone out there saying, "Making money is only one human priority and, moreso, it is not the most important one."
In the end, that's what's both so frustrating and so exhilirating about the Free Software movement: It's about something... something more than hoarding and sleeping and feeding and knowing not a thing.
Historically, the courts have been very friendly toward contracts voluntarily entered into. All contracts restrict your rights somewhat, if only in the simple sense of, "By selling this and receiving X money, you give up the right to use or access this car." As long as no coercion is used to secure the contract, how can you stake a philosophical battle over it? If people didn't want to live under the restrictions of the declaration (whatever they may be), then said people simply should not have signed.
Of course, without signing, they would be barred from the viewing. Oh, well. It's not like they --- or we -- have an unmitigated, natural "right" to see the viewing.
Whenever someone throws a tantrum over a ficticious "violation" of their Constitutional guarantees, it cheapens those guarantees and makes it harder for more rational people to safeguard them when they really matter and are really under assault.
You say, "It's not enough to increase readership by 10% if it destroys the publication." I ask, "What good is the current model if it forces university libraries -- forget about individual researchers -- to drop the publication entirely?"
And humans have done tremendous things for long periods of time even when they didn't make cold-hearted "economic sense".
In responding to a post one level up, sure, most people most of the time will have little interest in the arcana of any particular field. But free access is still important, because at least it leaves that choice -- be informed or not -- in the hands of the average citizen. Not in the publishers' hands. Not in the hands of MegaMultiContentMediaCorp. In the hands of the people who might be affected.
Why doesn't anyone seem to trust the citizenry any more? We're not the ones who broke faith.
It was stupid, myopic, and maybe cynical for the RIAA to attempt to construct a Challenge whose results could benefit only them and to expect anyone to conform to it. It is stupid and wrong for them to invoke the DCMA as a threat to cover up the screw-up they made.
Is that necessarily a bad thing? Maybe not. (Maybe -- it's not clear why, other than some vague moral sense, you have a "right" to profit from your intellectual exertions. It seems, to me, to make about as much sense to demand a "right" to profit from, say, breathing.) But since the value is created entirely by the people (by surrendering of their rights), one can imagine the government, perhaps, having a say in what mechanisms are used to maximize that value. To wit, copyrights and patents should exist to serve social ends.
I am continually astounded by the free-market libertarians who carp about people interfering in the "natural" market by "ripping off" the creators of intellectual output. Of course, if you really believe in the dead hand of Adam Smith, you recognize that the value of something is the price that someone is willing to pay; that is, the opportunity foregone by a purchaser. In the Digital Age, since copying is a cost-less process, the actual value of intellectual output has fallen to essentially zero.
This might lead to the End of the World as We Know It, but it's the way that free captialism will tend.
Of course, "infringement" is not "theft". If you infringe someone's copyright, or their patent, you certainly trample on rights secured by law over distribution or manufacture resulting from your intellectual output -- but it isn't theft, because the infringement does not reduce your own ability to utilize the object "stolen" (because no oject is stolen).
I am not someone who says, "Throw out the entire intellectual output regime". I think that record companies have the right to go after infringers of their copyrights... but it isn't theft, it isn't "piracy" (an even more ridiculous word), and it isn't a reason for them to cripple my hardware and software. I do not infringe and I resent the implicit presumption of guilt built into DAT, CSS, regional encording, etc.
And I resent the torturing of the language to serve narrow, selfish ends.
Interestingly, the score was almost an afterthought. Kubrick apparently hired someone to score the film. While waiting on that, he used the Blue Danube, etc., just to fill in as soundtrack, and liked it so much he kept it.
"... It taught us that we must create the future, or someone will do it for us..."
CJ Cregg: The more photo-friendly of the two turkeys gets a Presidential pardon and a full life at a children's petting zoo; the other one gets eaten.
Jed Bartlet: If the Oscars were like that, I'd watch.
Before I get zinged for nitpicking a typo, I'm just going for the pun. No criticism of the post's content intended... and isn't it content that really matters in evaluating these things?
I don't want to malign UD, who might very well be intending to benefit all humankind out of the goodness of their hearts. But the fact of the matter is, legitimate questions were raised about the apparently shady way things are structured, and this "response" does little or nothing to address them.
As for the kiddie-porn comment, the gist is this: It's not that anyone expects UD to actually do this. It's that the license propagated by UD reserves the right to do, by abnegating any responsibility for what their program does... even though they will not open the source and let the user decided if the code is safe.
Since the GPL (apparently) allows people to re-post this for less, we'll get to see if people really will put their money where their mouth is. Assuming, of course, that LibraNet has a relatively convenient way to get the money to them. (I believe this lack of easy mechanism is what kills most shareware.)
I'm not talking about their right to do this under the GPL or anything like that, about which I know nothing and care less. I'm talking about the accepted, but stupid, convention of equating mis-use of intellectual output with crimes of robbery, murder, and mayhem.
Yeah, I know it's a convention and it's understood by everyone. Yeah, I know it's losing battle to get people to stop accepting a bad usage with all its unconscious connotations. I just don't care: Improper copying simply is not piracy.
I think the original poster came pretty close to hitting it squarely on the head. Note that the suggestion was not that government ban the sending of information. It was proposed that government mandate the revelation of information-mining, so that you can vote with your wallet... intelligently. It's as easy to say "The fewer laws the better" as it is to call for a cradle-to-grave state. Both are failures and abdication of voter responsibility. What we need is the right laws, and their number will fall somewhere between zero and infinity. Though it was said 150 years ago, it's still true: