More on the thief (I thought we were past that)

Kevin Clark magicianzero at hotmail.com
Mon Apr 23 04:06:21 CEST 2001


>From: Angelo Toti <donald313us at yahoo.com>
>To: dcml at stp.ling.uu.se
>Subject: Re:  More on the thief (I thought we were past that)
>Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 10:15:11 -0700 (PDT)
>
> >Not being Uncle Scrooge, I CAN NOT AFFORD to spend
>that much time and
> >creative energy on work with no prospect of paying.
>If anyone can simply
> >come along and take it, without permission and
>without paying me, then the
> >work has no value to me and therefore will not be
>done.
>
>Anyone can simply come along and take it, that's
>right. If nobody did, that's not because of copyright
>laws, but because your site is not interesting enough
>to steal. I have lots of doubts BTW that you can feed
>your children with advertissments placed on your site.

Okay, let me see if I understand the arguments:
Don:  "It is wrong to take my material without permission or compensation."
Angelo:  "No one wants to take your boring stuff, and anyway, it can't be 
making you _that_ much money."

Did I miss a link in the logic, there?

> >When Mr. Totti steals a person's work, he steals that
>person's livelihood.
>
>No. The sites I used don't make the living of anyone.

How about it, Don -- do you see any income from your webwork?  That's what's 
at issue here:  lost income.  Not whether or not the sites in question 
actually "make the living of anyone".

>The #%$£~@!§ people are not those who use the works of
>others but the ones who harass others because they
>steal their texts or images.
>
>Just because you wrote one line of text one day you
>want everyone to keep asking you forever for
>permission of using that line of text. You make
>something publicly available and then pretend to keep
>an absolute full control on it. I say that is stupid
>on the Internet.

Tell you what, Angelo, I'm going to swipe your wallet without asking and 
without telling anyone where I got your credit cards.  After all, you made 
it publicly available.  How can you possibly get angry?  It's stupid to 
expect to maintain control of your belongings on a public sidewalk.  You are 
not allowed to press charges, either.  That would be "harassing others 
because they steal" what is yours.

>I reserve me the right of using any information I can
>find on the Internet anywhere, without mentioning my
>sources. Who cares about the name of the person who
>originally scanned an image?

What makes the Internet so special?  Why not just go to your local library, 
photocopy _War and Peace_, and publish it under your own name?

>The internet will always be a big mess where you can
>find
>pirated softwares, copyrighted music, games (to name
>the three most populars)
>etc. for free. That is not extravagant, that is the
>truth.

Yes, that's true.  And I will always be physically capable of picking your 
pocket, as above.  This does not mean that it should be allowed.

For an example of a webpage that seems to understand that whole copyright 
thing, see http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Cinema/1543



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