Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!haven!uvaarpa!hudson!biochsn.acc.Virginia.EDU!wrp
From: wrp@biochsn.acc.Virginia.EDU (William R. Pearson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: MacsBug available on Compuserve
Message-ID: <1559@hudson.acc.virginia.edu>
Date: 30 May 89 16:25:06 GMT
References: <31668@apple.apple.com> <141200042@cdp>
Sender: news@hudson.acc.virginia.edu
Reply-To: wrp@biochsn.acc.Virginia.EDU.acc.Virginia.EDU (William R. Pearson)
Organization: University of Virginia, Charlottesville
Lines: 27

In article <141200042@cdp> sklein@cdp.UUCP writes:
]
]Jordon says the copyright problem is "due to the anarachastic (sic) nature
]of the net, and cannot be addressed without changing the fundamental
]nature of the net."
]
]Wow!  To think that if I want to give away copyrighted material to anyone
]who wants it, the government is going to invalidate the copyright.
]
]The solution isn't to change the nature of the net, the solution lies in
]changing the copyright law!  Now let's see, where is my Senator's address?
] -shabtai

	It appears to be a principle of our legal system that if you
give something away to a lot of people, and then someone else gets
it and gives it away, you cannot have been damaged too much since
you were giving it away already.  Apple might not loose their copyright
by letting other people distribute it indiscriminately, but they would
lose their ability to sue anyone else and be paid damages.  You can
imagine that Apple would be very upset if they lost the right to
protect their system software from other companies' theft by distributing
it for free.

	"If you don't charge for it, it isn't worth anything."

Bill Pearson
wrp@virginia.EDU, UUCP, BITNET