h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

> The *only* instance when the GPL has any effect is when you *redistribute* the work.

Yeah, that's really what I meant. With art you can't just take a copy of it and then have the original unaltered, so it's not quite the same I guess.

Interesting thing I've just been looking up in web1913 (http://www.dict.org/ has an interface to it). They seem to draw a distinction between "theft" and "stealing".

"Theft" is described exactly as Benjamin puts it:

Theft \Theft\, n. [OE. thefte, AS. [thorn]i['e]f[eth]e,
[thorn][=y]f[eth]e, [thorn]e['o]f[eth]e. See {Thief}.]
1. (Law) The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious
taking and removing of personal property, with an intent
to deprive the rightful owner of the same; larceny.

Note: To constitute theft there must be a taking without the
owner's consent, and it must be unlawful or felonious;
every part of the property stolen must be removed,
however slightly, from its former position; and it must
be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of
the thief. See {Larceny}, and the Note under {Robbery}.

And the verb "to steal" is defined thus:

Steal \Steal\, v. t. [imp. {Stole}; p. p. {Stolen}; p. pr. & vb.
n. {Stealing}.] [OE. stelen, AS. stelan; akin to OFries.
stela, D. stelen, OHG. stelan, G. stehlen, Icel. stela, SW.
stj["a]la, Dan. sti[ae]le, Goth. stilan.]
1. To take and carry away, feloniously; to take without right
or leave, and with intent to keep wrongfully; as, to steal
the personal goods of another.

Maugre thy heed, thou must for indigence Or steal,
or borrow, thy dispense. --Chaucer.

The man who stole a goose and gave away the giblets
in ?lms. --G. Eliot.


As you can see, "theft" defines that the act deprives the original owner, whereas "stealing" doesn't. Perhaps it would be worth setting up a lawsuit against those people who use the term "IPT" then... , and the dictionary definition of "piracy" claims that you have to use brute force, and do it on the sea (so definitely need a lawsuit against people who use that term)...

~

I don't think it merits a lawsuit, but that was my point. I didn't actually know that stealing was different, but that certainly *is* what theft means....

And you must have heard Stallman's rants about the term 'intellectual property'... Almost as bad as his rants about the idea that people that want (proprietary) software to be free are the same as people that take over ships at sea, presumably wearing eye-patches and with parrots on their shoulders...

Arrrrrrrr.... me hearties!


~

If you look inside the front cover of a novel, on the same page as the copyright notices, you'll find a sentence which reads something like this:

"The right of Frank Herbert to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988."

The moral right to be identified as author is not the same as copyright. It is different in a very important way: It lasts forever.

Copyright is a convenience, created to provide the author with an income that he can live on, whether full- or part-time (eg a part-time musician making £1000 per year from his music can't live off it, but it makes his life easier). Once the author has died, and the publisher has been compensated for its investment, copyright is no longer necessary, and the work falls into the public domain.

On the other hand, the moral right to be identified as author is meant to prevent plagiarism. Suppose a book was written 100 years ago which is ahead of its time: few people at the time of writing appreciated it, but if written today would be a bestseller. Suppose you discover this book, and recognise it for the masterpiece-in-waiting that it is. What is the best thing to do? Do you republish it on the cheap, intact, with all the contemporary references that modern readers wouldn't understand? Or do you make hundreds of minor changes, bringing it more up to date, stick your name on it, claim copyright, and publish it at full price, not crediting the original author?

Obviously the best thing to do is the second, but crediting the original author. If we just had copyright, and copyright said you must give credit where it's due, then the obligation to give credit would end when the work goes out of copyright into the public domain. So the second option, while unethical, is completely legal in this scenario.

In fact, while it is defined in the same Act as copyright (the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988), these rights are distinct. Copyright is an economic right, which can be transferred or waivered; but moral rights are inalienable.

(There are two other moral rights: one to object to being credited where credit isn't due, and the other is not to have your work abused or changed in a way that defames you. Source: http://online.northumbria.ac.uk/faculties/art/information_studies/Imri/Jiscpas/site/adv_copy_moralrights.asp)

Blimey! Thanks, Pete! I learned a lot of stuff I didn't know there and was even able to comprehend it after a few s ...

~

There was a time, not so long ago, when making a copy was only illegal if you ere making money off of it. Thus, If you taped an album for a friend, that was alright, but if you started selling bootlegs then you were making money that the artist was entitled to, and thus steling from him. Just as a note on the subject of shared music, the Grateful Dead found a workable solution: They not only allowed but encouraged bootlegs, even letting audience members with tape recorders into the sound booth at concerts for best sound quality. They then made their money by selling concert tickets, t-shirts and all manner of other Grateful dead Merchandise, which they did not allow people to bootleg.

...and you know what? Artists STILL make almost all their money from concerts. Whilst an album is great for promoting concerts, only massive artists make serious money from them, since they tend to get a tiny fraction of the profits from each unit sold, whereas they get most of the money from a concert.

How about turning the question of piracy on its head?

What about imposing restrictions upon the use that can be made of the money we spend on the product? "By cashing this cheque the vendor agrees not to distribute the funds to anyone else"
I get the copyright material and the other guy gets my property in the form of money. I don't alter or pass on his stuff and he doesn't pass on my money.


Is this acceptable?


Or how about paying for a mass-produced album with photocopies of banknotes? or banknotes of my own design, printed out myself?

look the way i see it is if we want to move forwards with new forms of media we have to realize how to control what power is given to the
end user , as the storage medium changes (eg dvd,cdrom ,tapes ect)
there is a short time in wich forms of media can be controled as in
when videos first came out the public a:couldn,t really afford a player,
b:even if they could they just couldn,t find a supplier
there fore the answer to the p2p problem is in the next gen of storage
now sony is working on a new form of a dvd called blue ray these disks will hold some sort of protection , however it will also mean that some sort of new player has to come out at the same time , if these disks can hold upto 27gig a time the music industry should be able to put
a bands video,s(lets call it vcd, avi,mpeg whatever) on the disk aswell
as the whole album new hifi systems could be developed to play the video s aswell as the album the choice being up to the end user
now because if you download a music video off the internet the quality is shit blurred ,time freezes poor quality overal then yes you could download them for free but you wouldn,t get the qaulity of a true
disk and yes you could rip or download the album but you wouldn,t get the video's if the disk was cracked and copyed you still have the storage problem a standard dvd can only hold 4.8 gig even a dual layer disk works out at 8.5 gig so as you can see it works out more expencive to copy than it would be to buy , so if the sale of blueray rewriters
is with held then the copying would be not in the end users interest,
also how would he get hold of the blueray type disks to burn to
however this does give a plus side of things 1 is the music industry could allow free downloads of music, free downloads of video's and allow p2p to work no problem but if you want quality video's and the best playback for the album tracks then you would pay the £20.00 for a proper copy in the first place,
ok so the music industry think's to itself that means every album up til now would be up for download at no charge yes but only in the short
term as new albums were released then they wouldn,t be avalible if they can't be ripped to begin with so if you really wanted to protect the contents you'd target prosicutions at the makers of the new rippers and leave the inosent p2p users alown at the end of the day who wants to
prosicute a 12 year old for haveing music
anyway thats what i think about all this they need to wake up and embrance the new formats as they are released at the end of the day the internet is there for us all.