Declan McCullagh wrote:
This state of affairs creates a mild problem (to go back to the recent topic of discussion on cypherpunks) for those who strongly believe in the First Amendment when applied to nonprofit or not-for-profit speech but less so when it comes to speech that's part of a commercial transaction.
Heck, Declan, as far as I recall, you don't believe that the First Amendment applies to people who merely REPEAT (for profit) too many words you originally wrote as speech that's part of a certain commercial transaction (i.e. "copyrighted articles", which you are paid for). In fact, I can't look this up now, but I believe you've posted to the cypherpunks list on this very topic in the past. You want the government to punish people who simply say too many words that you originally said. Isn't that very inconsistent philosophically for you? By the way, as you know, this distinction is enshrined in copyright law: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html Sec. 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
Let's hope Dmitry, a budding capitalist, doesn't fall into that same commercial-speech-can-be-regulated catchall.
But Declan, as a Libertarian proselytizer. how can you justify making your living from a government-granted monopoly which infringes on free speech? Note the above is not necessarily my view. But if you are going to try to use this tragedy to recruit people for silly Libertarian ideology, I think consistency demands you apply the same argument to your articles too. Have you changed your views on this topic since I last saw them discussed? -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer sethf@sethf.com http://sethf.com http://www10.nytimes.com/2001/07/19/technology/circuits/19HACK.html