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| Let's be clear here so we don't look like collegiate reactionaries ourselves by Senor Barborito 03/16/2003, 9:38am PST | ||||
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Entropy Stew wrote: There's nothing unconstitutional about trying to prevent further theft of intellectual property. What's counter to the spirit of the framers of the Constitution are copyrights in excess of 14 years (the current number is somewhere around a century), and it's likely that if the Framers had grasped the concept of software they would have been against lengthy (longer than 5 years certainly, possibly as little as 2) patents upon it. The former subverts the concept of public domain - particularly the non-stop extending. Certainly the latter can only be harmful to the development of the Republic especially in the software industry. Finally one could argue fair use here, but that's a pretty vague concept and I don't think it was meant to produce the results we're seeing on college networks and it certainly wasn't meant to produce the results seen on the greater Internet. While I have no great problem with casual piracy - in my opinion it's the moral equivalent of loitering or grafitti - once it starts getting out of control it can seriously harm small companies and startups. Treating piracy like a serious crime demonstrates a legislature completely out of touch with its constituency, but not treating organizers of distributers to 6 months of jail time and a further six months of computerless parole is unfair to people out there producing better ideas and building companies around them within a capitalist system. Personally I want to see us in a hybrid Capitalist-Socialist system (Capitalism with $30,000-$80,000 caps based on education, performance, responsibility, risk, etc.) with the state directly sponsoring innovation and the concept of intellectual property blown to the four winds, but that's just my personal ideal. The two paragraphs above are an attempt to construct a sane position within the reality of our current situation rather than to promote any actual sane ideal. --SB |
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Zseni funds terrorism? by 03/15/2003, 5:22pm PST  So much for the constitution -nt- NT by 03/15/2003, 5:31pm PST Let's be clear here so we don't look like collegiate reactionaries ourselves by 03/16/2003, 9:38am PST the later 'sane' should read 'sane or insane' NT NT by 03/16/2003, 9:41am PST Actually, I meant it in the "punishment fitting the crime" sense -nt- NT by 03/16/2003, 6:29pm PST Piling on by 03/16/2003, 2:45am PST That at least was funny NT by 03/16/2003, 9:02am PST |
