From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Sat Aug 12 2000 - 19:18:48 MDT
Dan Fabulich wrote:
>
> Lorrey wrote:
>
> > Just because it is easy for you to violate a person's right does not
> > mean that right never existed. I can disarm, rape, and kill people all
> > day long. That doesn't mean I didn't violate their rights or that they
> > had no rights to life, self defense, or control of their bodies.
>
> I'm not arguing that the right never existed, just that the right to
> prevent others from copying information doesn't exist now.
>
> Anyway, my main point is this: Even if it is an existant right to
> prevent others from copying certain pieces of information, there's
> nothing that you can do to stop it, and the situation will become even
> more hopeless for you as encryption and "ripping" technologies of
> various sorts improve. You might regard these developments as bad; I
> don't. But they are unstoppable.
a) the ability to kill others, quite easily, has existed since the dawn
of time
b) we still have a right to life
c) therefore your argument is invalid.
>
> > > It is irrational to try to enforce intellectual property rights on a
> > > world containing encryption.
> >
> > Sorry, that is a morally vacant statement. Its like saying its
> > irrational to enforce one's right to life in a world where killing
> > people is easy.
>
> It's not irrational to enforce one's alleged right. It's irrational
> to TRY to do so if enforcement is impossible. (Lucky for us, it's a
> lot easier to enforce one's right to live than it is to enforce
> copyright.)
So when making ebola-like cold viruses is a 6th graders science project,
nobody has a right to live anymore? Sorry, doesn't wash. Opportunism is
not an ethic.
-- TANSTAAFL Mike Lorrey "In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free." --- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) "A person who wants a society that is both safe and free, wants what never has been, and what never will be." --- Thomas Jefferson "It's a Republic, if you can keep it..." --- Benjamin Franklin
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