Richard J Kinch wrote:
Jeff Wisnia writes:


Do you also feel that buying a ticket to see a movie at a multiplex
cinema and then hiding in a restroom stall for a while so you can slip
in and see another movie which you note has plenty of empty seats
while you are there isn't a theft?


Renting a seat (and then taking another) in someone else's room for two
hours is not comparable to rearranging bits patterns on your own hard
drive.

If you could magically wish for the light patterns on your retinas at
home, without paying for the movie ticket, would you consider that
"stealing"? Hypothetically speaking, of course.


I'm not sure which saddens me the most, your stealing copyrighted
material or proudly admitting it on a newsgroup.


(For my part, the thread was speaking abstractly, not in regard to
anyone's admission.)

Agreed, because I know you are too clever to publically admit to doing
anything like that, but the thread shows I was responding to a post by
that "ignoramus" person in which he/she wrote:

****************

I use my own perl scripts for it, but for you, forte agent is the way
to go. I already burned my CD-Rom with this wonderful handbook.

****************


No "material" is involved. States merely changed in a machine. You
might as well say someone owns a copyright on certain DRO positions on
your Bridgeport.

And what do you say about the copyrighting of music? Should everyone
with a good voice or who is a talented instrumentalist be entitled to
record copyrighted stuff and post it on the web for anyone else who
wants to enjoy it to grab?

One can conceive of information (in the Shannon
theoretic sense) as property, and in turn one can postulate the
transmission of such information as theft of property, but that does not
make it so, other than as a linguistic tautology.

Here, I will become the world's greatest thief ever:

main() { int i; for (;i++ } /* For arbitrary integer precision */

There, I have expressed a program which will generate literally every
book, movie, digital photograph, etc., that has ever been written or
ever will be. I am guilty of copying everything that has been or ever
will be copyrighted (*extends arms for handcuffs*).

I think some guy who first thought about a lot of monkeys, typewriters
and Shakespeare's plays beat you to that one. G

My comment relative to your hypotheticaly running that program and
creating a near infinitely long document is that it wouldn't bother me
because it would take you a near infinite amount of time to locate and
read anything I've got copyrighted. I doubt if it would bother any other
copyright holder for the same reason.

Next please?


--
Jeffry Wisnia

(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"As long as there are final exams, there will be prayer in public
schools"