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nafex - Re: [nafex] Copyrights, online or pirate

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  • From: PermacultureNo1@aol.com
  • To: nafex@egroups.com
  • Subject: Re: [nafex] Copyrights, online or pirate
  • Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 08:39:00 EST

I thought I had said my piece on this, but one more point (at least) needs to
be made.

If we grow apples or bananas, we feel we own the fruit. Yet the fruit
produces itself, with more or less assistance from us. No one objects to
buying gasoline, which is found in the ground, or say coal, which is marketed
in a relatively unchanged shape. Yet the people who profit from legal
ownership of these things have done nothing to create them. Intellectual
property, art, journalism, and so forth, exist because of the creative force
of the individual involved. If I write a poem, all society can lay claim to
is the history of language that brought me to this point. If another
language had evolved toward me, I might express the same concept, feeling,
insight, whatever in a poem in that language.

The issue here is ownership of what one creates. One does not create
information--it is out there. Anyone can re-write anything someone else
wrote, for example, and not infringe the least. (Well there are dubious prac
tices about proprietary information in business, but they are not germaine
here.)
The fact that people want to copy or repost material wholesale, without
giving them a new form, is evidence that the author or creator has created
something of value. if material is written well, it may be that no one else
could have written it that way, of course. (I talk about writing as it is my
main field, but we could talk about a photograph or a sculpture or a movie
the same way.) That is all the more reason to respect the creator.

The issue has been couched so far in economic values, which seems to be the
only values the government and most people respect. But there is a right per
se, in my opinion, of the creator to control the disposition of his/her work.
This is sometimes respected by law in the USA; sometimes not. The law sets
minimum standards for behavior. Honorable people think butter of themselves
than seeking to do the maximul allowable harm. They want to do the most
practical good. And sometimes they want to do good even when it is
inconvenient.

DH

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