From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Wed Jul 17 2002 - 15:48:58 MDT
> (Brian D Williams <talon57@well.com>):
>
> >It is a basic moral duty of every human being to defy, expose, and
> >help change laws that are unjust and stupid.
>
> I agree, We just disagree on whether copyright law is unjust or
> stupid, I say no.
Yes, that's the core of our argument; you feel that making use of
someone else's creative work is morally wrong, for some reason. I
don't. But I also think the burden of proof should be on the side
favoring restrictive laws: freedom should be assumed, absent a very
compelling reason to restrict it. I have seen, and accept, very
compelling reasons why I should accept restrictions against violence
and fraud, for example, so I'm willing to limit the freedom to do
those things (though even fraud bugs me a little--we do accept some
kinds of fraud like religions and alternative medicines without much
downside). But I have yet to see a compelling argument for limiting
the freedom of people to make use of other people's creativity and
invention. Indeed, I think it's the height of arrogance to suggest
that the intended or envisioned uses of an author or inventor's work
could be even a small fraction of the uses to which it could be put
by others, so to justify restricting those other uses, even defining
them away as "immoral", requires a level of justification that I
just haven't seen from anyone, and appealing to the pretexts of
legislators and and the financial interests of third parties like
the record industry doesn't cut it.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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