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From: els@pur-phy.UUCP (Eric Strobel)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: piracy = theft????
Message-ID: <1277@pur-phy.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Apr-84 13:26:22 EST
Article-I.D.: pur-phy.1277
Posted: Tue Apr  3 13:26:22 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Apr-84 03:30:26 EST
Organization: Purdue University Physics Dept.
Lines: 48


      
      An amazing number of people jumped on me when I made my
comment about a $20 found on the street.  I never said that I
wouldn't make an attempt to find the owner!  I mistakenly thought
that the civilized reader would assume that.  My point was that
if I end up with the money, I'm not going to lose any sleep about
it.  I've lost money myself and said to myself,"It's your own
stupid fault, you twit!  Be more careful the next time!"  I 
suspect my real mistake was mentioning a $20 and not a $1 bill!!
How many of you have picked up a dime and pocketed it????  Was that
theft????  If anyone thinks so, that is a matter of personal ethics
and I won't deny anyone the chance to feel that way.
      Speaking about personal ethics, having worked with a local
minister while he did his D.Min. thesis on this subject, I feel
somewhat qualified to talk about it, but there is very little to
say.  Personal ethics are just that, personal! 
      The real problem lies in the arguments that equate information
with property.  Car theft is theft because you are taking something
that LEGALLY belongs to someone else.  Nobody owns the HBO transmissions
I spoke of.  They are on the airwaves, and the airwaves are free.
The only way someone can own information ( as far as I know) is to
hold a patent or copyright or something similar.  This is probably
enough to keep most people from making copies.  When I said that
software should be encrypted or something like that, that was based
on the assumption that encryption would be easier than filing 
copyright paperwork (thinking the process to be of the same order
of difficulty as getting a patent).  I have learned that anyone
can copyright anything just by affixing the right words.  For the
one person operation, this is then easier.
       I still maintain that if I don't see the copyright stuff
and there is no encryption, then the author has been careless!





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