DIYbanter - View Single Post

On 24 Apr 2006 13:43:24 -0700, wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

Music, poetry, computer programs, and using certain substances to
prevent bacterial infection. All were doing quite well, even before
the became elgible for synthetic property status via legal monopolies.
To assume that they could only exist under this status is to ignorantly
ignore the fact that they existed without it.

Stop talking generalities and cite a specific example.

Beowulf

Beowulf what? A book about Beowulf?

No the quasi-poetic story itself. A creative work long preceding the
concept of copyright, raised as a counter to the ignorant assumption
that our lives would be devoid of such richness in a world without the
concept of copyrights.

---
You seem to think that we still live in that time. We don't. Fast
forward about a thousand years into the future from then and it
becomes apparent that the need for copyright has come about
precisely because of the need for artists to be protected from the
wolves who would otherwise prey upon them.

Wolves like you, for instance, who think it's your God-given right
to copy anyone's works and disseminate them in any way you see fit,
under the pretense that by so doing you enrich our lives.

In fact, all you're really interested in being able to do is graze,
free range, on what's out there for your own benfit. That kind of
attitude and behavior can only contribute to the theft of resources
from the artist, quite conceivably lowering his output and
diminishing any enrichment our lives might attain from that source.

Other than the Nazi aspect of it, I don't understand what it is with
people like you who think it's OK to take other people's work and
deal with it as if it were your own, but I'm sure that if the shoe
was on the other foot and you had anything worth protecting, you and
your ilk would be the first to cry wolf.

--
John Fields
Professional Circuit Designer