On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 12:16:13 -0600, Richard J Kinch
wrote:

Jeff Wisnia writes:

It's the part about the author having rights to money that bothers me.
I look at it from a credit/debit perspective, and when a person
photocopies copyrighted material because they want to read it, whether
for casual or for business use, they are potentially depriving the
author of a sale.

The "depriving someone of an opportunity" argument is simply begging the
question. Granted, the opportunity is lost when a casual copy is made,
but that doesn't address the question of whether that opportunity was
literally the property (as the copyright fundamentalists put it, the
chimera of "intellectual property") of the author.

That question is addressed in the law of copyright. In the United
States it is quite clear that the author (or his/her successor) does
indeed own that opportunity. That's been settled for about as long as
the United States has existed.

idiot argument snipped
The mere opportunity to make a hypothetical sale is not anyone's right.

Wrong again. As a matter of law authors and other do have such rights.

The copyright doctrine generally excludes works that are "utilitarian".

There is no such exception in copyright law. There is a requirement
for some measure of creativity as well as originality, but that can be
met by a utilitarian work. See the Supreme Court's decision in _Feist_

The author of a literary work gets a copyright, but the author of a
gourmet dish or a brick wall does not.

Wrong. Both can be copyrighted and at least gourmet dishes have been
copyrighted. Presumably one could get a copyright on the design of a
brick wall if it was sufficently unique.

You can copy the meal or the wall but not the book.
Nope.

Neither "original authorship" nor "sweat of the
brow" will in themselves yield a coprightable work.

For once you're correct, at least in the US. The test, as enunciated
by the Supreme Court, includes the element of creativity. Read the
_Feist_ deicsion, which you cited in an earlier thread.

(And the rest of you, for amusement, might want to look up the "Abie's
Irish Rose" case. It was an early example of the limits of 'original
authorship.')

Copyrights are arbitrary creations of government fiat for economic expedience,

That's twice you've been right in one message. That may be a record.

not legal protections enforcing a moral property right.

They are most certainly legal protections. And enforcing a moral
property right? I'd argue that they do in fact enforce a moral
property right.

.. the same way I usually put down
people who brag about their cheating the IRS at cocktail parties with,
"So I'm supposed to feel good about your being a crook, which means
that I'll have to pay more than my fair share in taxes?"

"Cheating the IRS" is an apt comparison in at least one regard.

The dollar amount of your taxes due is an arbitrary figure without any
moral basis.

There is certainly a well-defined legal basis. You seem to have a lot
of trouble with the distinction between 'moral' and 'legal. Here's a
hint: You can't be put in jail for violating a moral precept. You can
be jailed for violating the law.

Perhaps you have heard how 10 differenet IRS agents will
come up with 10 different figures when calculating the taxes due on a
typical return. And the government changes the numbers from year to
year. For example, the death tax will disappear in a few years, yet
today it is as high as about 50 percent.

My God! Three times correct in the same message. The conclusions you
draw from the fact are, however, lacking.

So the concept of a "fair share" is absurd;

The concept of paying the taxes you owe under some legal calculation
is not at all absurd however. You still fail to distinguish between
legal, moral and (by extension) your own wishes.

there is no such thing, the numbers are just made up

Wrong. I sincerely hope you don't do your own taxes on that basis.

based on politics, and even then they are noisy. The "fair share" is
fallacious both as a reification and a quantification.

But the idea of paying the amount of legally owe is not. Neither is
the idea that cheating on your taxes is illegal and can, at best, cost
you a good deal of money.

And I can't imagine that you're popular at parties preaching about it.

People who can distinguish between what is morally and legally right
and those who cannot frequently are.

Now Jesus and Paul taught us to pay our taxes, to keep The
Man from hassling you. There's no moral duty to pay 2 drachmas, per
se.

Most would say there is a _general_ moral duty to obey the law.
(Mitigated by the possibility of laws which are immoral in
themselves.)

--RC

"Sometimes history doesn't repeat itself. It just yells
'can't you remember anything I've told you?' and lets
fly with a club.
-- John W. Cambell Jr.