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From: faustus@ucbcad.UUCP (Wayne A. Christopher)
Newsgroups: net.jokes.d
Subject: Re: Re: Dave Berry Copyrights Flame
Message-ID: <242@ucbcad.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 15-May-85 01:22:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.242
Posted: Wed May 15 01:22:55 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 17-May-85 05:34:42 EDT
References: <3026@dartvax.UUCP> <226@ucbcad.UUCP> <3065@dartvax.UUCP>
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Organization: UC Berkeley CAD Group, Berkeley, CA
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> Seriously, of course not.  In the U.S., since we are (last I heard)
> a democracy, the laws become laws because a majority of the folks
> feel that doing whatever you're doing is wrong.  Under such cases,
> since majority does rule, you go along with.  Just to go overboard
> on this one, if I feel killing people in cold blood is a pretty okay
> thing to do and I find nothing wrong with it, that means I still
> shouldn't do it because the society that I live in says I shouldn't.
> If I don't like it, I move.

I think that if you do believe that killing people is ok, the reason
that you don't do it is because somebody will eventually take revenge
and kill you for it. The only function of laws is to let you know that
if you do a certain thing, there is a large and well organized group of
people (the government) who will come and get you if they catch you
doing it.

In the case of copywrite laws, if I don't believe that violating a
certain copywrite is bad, I will do it, but I will realize that it
is a possibility that the person who holds the copywrite may decide
to make me stop, in which case I will because I don't want to get
sent to jail or whatever (or because I'm just a nice guy). I the case
in question, the poster of the articles felt that Dave Barry probably
didn't care if he posted his stuff, and he even mentioned to the
newspaper that distributed the stuff that he was doing it. I don't
see any moral problems... Also, since the posting of somebody else's
copywrited stuff couldn't possibly effect you, you shouldn't have any
reason to cause trouble for the poster. When you write stuff and have
it published without your consent, then you can complain.

> For example,
> if I think clothes are horrible things, this doesn't mean I can go
> strolling around with nothing on and seriously upset my neighbors.
> I think most of us feel that people forcing their beliefs on others
> is tacky.  I feel that being tacky is wrong.  QED.

Walking around naked isn't forcing beliefs on anybody, except maybe the
belief that there is a naked person walking around... If being tacky
is wrong, do you think there should be a law against being tacky? That
would be fun... I think that people flaming about copywrites is tacky,
so I guess that makes you wrong and me right...

	Wayne