On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 04:44:48PM -0500, Mike Miller wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Oct 2008, Elvedin Trnjanin wrote:
> 
> > I was under the impression that non-free software was immoral because 
> > anything that takes away your rights is considered immoral. Doesn't 
> > matter if you agree to it, it's just a matter-of-fact.
> >
> > Is that not so?

Not necessarily: we agreed to take away people's rights to punch one
another willy-nilly, but we don't find this restriction immoral.

> Then copyright is immoral, right?

It depends.

   Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life
   of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by
   being shared.
      -- Buddha

or

   For if a thing is not diminished by being shared with others, it
   is not rightly owned if it is only owned and not shared.
      -- St. (Aurelius) Augustinus

>                                   If I write a book, and someone buys it, 
> he has implicitly agreed to the copyright terms and the law will come down 
> hard on him if he starts making copies and selling them.

OK.

>                                                           But without the 
> protection of copyright law, I think the consumer will not be getting the 
> kind of quality books to read that he has today.

I cannot say if you wrote that seriously or not.  For one, the concept of
copyright is quite recent (200 years or so) and originated in the desire
of the authorities to control the printing press, in order to control
the spread of 'destabilizing' ideas.  The pact of the publishers with
the authorities allowed them to become the rich middle man that they
are today, so they can buy new extensions of the concept.  But books
and other artistic forms of expression exist from way before that, and
continue to enchant us (all the dramas and movie plots can be traced to
the ancient Greeks, we just keep changing the costumes).  And there is
no mention of copyright in the 4000 years of recorded history (before
1700s).

Regarding the actual 'quality' of things that 'consumers' are getting,
we should be really starting another thread, maybe in another forum.

Cheers,
florin

-- 
Bruce Schneier expects the Spanish Inquisition.
      http://geekz.co.uk/schneierfacts/fact/163
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