Re: "If you didn't pay for it, you've stolen it!"
[Chronic readers can skip this..] At 12:08 AM 10/25/03 -0400, BillyGOTO wrote:
Yes it is the case. But many of us regard State force as a *very* different thing than a property owner's whims. So the State can censor, but an individual merely doesn't want your bumper sticker on his car. Individuals *can't* censor in the 1st amend sense. (Similarly with compelled speech.) The State *must* treat everyone the same, but private entities are not similarly bound. The State must permit citizens to bear arms, but in my saloon you leave them at the door, or don't enter. Simple. Entering my saloon is a private transaction.
1. Tech point: Any passive media for human consumption can NOT be guarded by gremlins. ADCs handle that. The "analog hole". Active content (eg programs) can be though. 2. Many of us do worry about eroding conventional rights by these same gremlins, *when they are supported by wrong law*. E.g., I have a right in the US to lend a book. A digital book could make doing so a pain, but not impossible. And again, I (as reader) have *no* right to compel the publisher to use a large font (if I've got bad eyes) or make it easy to xerox. Or backup or lend or sell. Now, if it is simply some publisher's whim to release content protected by gremlins, that's their decision. *What gets our goat* is when the State uses its force eg to make tinkering with our property illegal. You'll need to understand that difference around here. Many of us (unlike many working for the State) still respect private property, and *mutually consensual* transactions. If you want to publish a book on paper that prevents its xeroxing, that's fine. Might be annoying, but its within your rights. But when the State says that say scanners or image processing or figuring out how the book is bound is illegal (DMCA), well... A gremlin is a nuisance, a gremlin backed by the state.. indicates that someone "needs killing", and its not the gremlin.
Again, you can publish in fonts that don't photocopy. Its your right. And its my right to try to get around that, to exercise my right eg to fair use. But it is immoral and unconstitutional for the State to interfere with *either* of us -publisher or reader. Because we're both choosing to enter a mutually consensual transaction, the State has no grounds to interfere. That's basically what freedom is about. It doesn't even matter if the transaction is harmful to one or both of us; masochism (pharmaceuticals, N-ary sex between arbitrary conspecifics, etc) should be legal. Life liberty and the pursuit of whatever. Some of these journals have announced that
they will be discontinuing their print editions altogether because they
are fed up with libraries letting the public look at them.
So? And other journals are free to everyone. (Is that unfair competition? No) Its up to the journal, their contributors, their readers. Some of the
| Unlike paper materials, digital information generally is not
Nice pun. But librarians are merely acting in accordance with contracts they chose to sign. No one put a gun to their heads; only the State does that. purchased
| by the library; rather it is licensed by the library from information
I've bought some helically grooved vinyl disks. This also gives me a license to play their content, or make a Wimshurst generator from them, or go skeet shooting with them. Should the vinyl object warp, I retain that license. Should I download an MP3 of the same content (which may have been derived from diffraction-grating polycarbonate disks), this is no different than making a tape for my car. It is not copyright infringement. If I lend, or sell, my disks, I also transfer that license for the duration of the transfer. Now forget that the content happens to be embedded in a slab of plastic.
Bingo! Librarians have the same rights as the rest of us mortals. Similarly, it doesn't matter if 1 or 1e6 read my blog, we are all reporters, and better recognized salaried reporters have no special rights.
The way I see it, we're taking two leaps here.. One leap is thinking of
ourselves as individuals with the same rights as libraries under law.
Not a leap. Equal under the law.
Its looking particularly grim because the Congressvermin are 0wn3d. That doesn't change the principles. Just makes us yearn for regime change. ---- We are all reporters, we are all book sellers. We are all first class objects. --Tim May
To add to this: There is no law stating that I cannot take my books and read them backwards, skip every other word, read the odd chapters in reverse and the even chapters forward, or try to "decode" the book by translating it to another language, ask someone with better eyes than mine to read it to me, or chose to wear green tinted lenses while reading it, read it to kids or the elderly, lend it - or rent it to friends, use it as a paperweight, drop it on the floor, et cetera. I can take it with me to other countries and read it there, as well etc. Once I bought it, it's mine. DVD's "protected" by CSS on the other hand cannot be read except by approved DVD players, and you can't (legally) "read them with another pair of eyes" by playing them with a DVD player that doesn't have the right key. You're also not allowed - by policy - to fastforward past the annoying FBI warning, or in some cases the evil commercials. If you drop it on the floor and scratch it, you're out $20 or whatever you paid for it. You're not allowed to use it in countries with regions different than what the publisher approves, you're not allowed to decypher the contents of the DVD by using DeCSS, you're not allowed to rent it to others, or charge admission to others to see it. If you bought an audio DVD and your car doesn't have a DVD player, or your only portable stereo system can only play tapes, you're not allowed to legally copy the music off the DVD onto other media to play in other devices. If you bought a copy protected audio CD, and you bypass it's protection and somehow copy it to tape, so you can play it in your car, or to another CD, so you have a backup incase it gets damaged in your car from extreme temperatures, or gets scratched, or your car gets broken into or stolen, you're now a criminal deserving the same kinds of jail times and fines as would the theif who stole your car - if not more. Some media are more equal than others. This should not be the case - and shouldn't even be possible -- except in a society where the media whores and monguls are able to bribe those who are corrupt and write laws at the same time. ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of /|\ \|/ :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\ <--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech. \/|\/ /|\ :Found to date: 0. Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD. \|/ + v + : The look on Sadam's face - priceless! --------_sunder_@_sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------ On Sat, 25 Oct 2003, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
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Major Variola (ret)
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