response 122 of 206:

Sep 17 04:18 UTC 2000

Not true. Infringement still takes place if the copyright holder distributes
their work for free but does not release that work into the public domain.
Unless the work has been released, it's illegal to copy work regardless of
the compensation or lack thereof (except as it falls under "fair use").

response 124 of 206:

Sep 17 13:51 UTC 2000

Depends on MP3's release policy. It could be.

There are reasons why somebody would be willing to give something away for
free, but still insist that they be the only ones to distribute it. For one
thing, there may be elements of it that are necessary for the whole, that may
not be effectively communicated in copies. That's hard to see in the case of
music, but a short story may have been written with a specific font, links,
or page breaks that may be lost when passed along; or, more importantly, the
copier may decide to drop off the name of the author, either deliberately or
through oversight.

Also, companies may give something away as a promotion, taking the loss in
order to track interest in that product. A record label may be letting MP3
distribute so that the label can see who's interested in the music. The loss
in revenue is made up for a gain in market research. That benefit is lost if
people send copies to friends rather than having friends go to MP3 to
download.

I'm sure there are other reasons, too.

response 126 of 206:

Sep 19 03:06 UTC 2000

The second half of #124 makes sense to me, but not the first. I was
hypothesizing about making an exact copy of the original downloaded file, so
any elements necessary for the whole in the original would also be present
in the copy.

I'm not sure about the "loss of control" argument of #125 either, but I'll
refrain from commenting on that until I've thought about it a bit more.

response 128 of 206:

Sep 19 21:00 UTC 2000

You should have included abortion (in the first two trimesters, etc) in
your original list of killing that is not "murder". Your subsequent
qualification of that is probably correct.

response 130 of 206:

Sep 21 14:27 UTC 2000

        I'd thought that the chief purpose of Napster was to exchange MP3
format music.  Now MP3 format music doesn't have to be illegally acquired.
A number of artists legally give out their music for free.  And Napster was
more than willing to work with the RIAA on creating an encrypted standard to
ensure that people wouldn't steal copyrighted works.

response 132 of 206:

Sep 21 19:10 UTC 2000

So if I stole something and gave it away, the person I gave it to would be
a thief, Paul? No. They recieved stolen goods, yes, but unknowingly. Thus
may be the case with Napster, as well. In many cases, an artist may have given
the music away, in order to gain publicity or for whatever other reason...
In others, it has been recorded illegally. Should I have to check every single
song that I download to be sure it's okay? How would I do this? Is it my
responsibility to assume the worst with every gift I'm given (if I don't see
a receipt, you stole it, therefore this is stolen merchandise...) or every
song I might download? Now, I happen not to use Napster, and most of the songs
I have downloaded have been from legally and morally fine sources, which I
can verify as having the artists' imprimateur. How-so-ever, what about the
ones which I can't verify? Should I assume that they're pirates? Or what?
Seems a little cynical to me. 

response 138 of 206:

Sep 21 23:14 UTC 2000

Let me rephrase my point from 129. I spoke incorrectly.

When you take something that you know does not belong to you, your reason for
taking it is moot to the debate as to whether or not you've committed a theft.
It will probably be relevant to the legal system's decision about how, and
how much, to punish you. Likewise, if you return the object after you're done
using it, that will probably also be taken into account.

That doesn't change the fact that taking a rowboat which does not belong to
you is theft, both legally and morally.

In the vernacular, "theft" is not defined in terms of the intent that the
individual had when taking or copying an item; theft is defined solely in
terms of perceived rights to ownership and use ("perceived" only to the extent
that if I have no reason to believe that the person who's offering something
for exchange, sale, or gift doesn't have the legal right to do so, I'm not
party to the crime involved). The primarylegal distinction between theft and
infringement is whether a tangible object is being illegally obtained (thus
depriving the rightful owner of use), which is "theft", or whether a copy of
something is being illegally produced and/or distributed (thus depriving the
owner of the right to copy as he/she sees fit -- hency "copyright"), which
is "infringement."

While there are many vagaries in intellectual property law when it concerns
portions of a copyrighted work, ideas inspired by a copyrighted work, and so
forth, there are no substantial vagaries when it comes to copying whole
copyrighted works. It should be noted that "copyrighted creatve works" is a
redundancy by American law -- all works of creative origin created in the past
75 years or so are legally protected by copyright law, and it is up to the
creator to decide to what extent the rights to copy shall be made available
to the general public, and for what compensation. Copyright holders are free
to sell those rights, to release works into the public domain, to give away
copies of their work but retain control over them, and so forth.

With regard to stolen goods and the purchase thereof, there are settings in
which one might suppose that the grand majority of items for sale or
distribution are illegally obtained, and settings in which one might suppose
that the grand majority of items for sale are legally optioned. For instance,
I would be less surprised to learn that the pawn shop on the corner is fencing
stolen goods than to learn that the Wards at the mall was, and even less
surprised to find out that the man in the trenchcoat on the corner offering
me brand new in the box Trinitrons for $100/pop was fencing.

The same goes for Napster. Yes, it would be cynical to assume that all MP3s
available via Napster were illegal. But, given that there are in fact websites
that do have legitimate contracts with artists and record companies to
distribute MP3s free of charge, there are more reliable ways to get copies
of less suspicious legality.

I don't think it would be economically feasible to fence CDs through used
record stores. I would assume that used CD stores of any reputation would be
suspicious if someone showed up with more than one, and certainly more than
three, copies of the same title, or with more than a dozen or so total CDs
less than a year old. It wouldn't be worth the risk.

Radio stations do sometimes dum their promotional copies into the used music
system, and that's technically illegal. I have quite a few "promotional
copies," and I'm prepared to hand them back if the record companies ever come
calling. Which they won't.

At any rate, though, it goes back to the issue of scale. There's no real
difference, legally speaking, between somebody making a Metallica MP3
available via Napster or somebody making a CD copy of a Metallica song for
all his friends. It's an issue of scale, though... it's much easier to make
many more illegal copies via Napster than via the Friends' Network or via
shoplifting/fencing.

response 140 of 206:

Sep 22 13:44 UTC 2000

Are you not depriving the owner of the boat of that boat for the time period
during which you are saving the drowning child? Is this deprivation not
non-consensual?

And, one more time, slowly for the reading impaired:

When you infringe upon a copyright, you are depriving the owner of that
copyrighted material of the right to decide how that material is to be
distributed.

The purpose of intellectual property law -- to provide a system for
stimulating original creative thought by rewarding that thought through social
recognition, fiscal compensation, and other means -- has not changed. Do you
suggest we abandon intellectual property law altogether?

There was a social experiment under which the concept of personal
accomplishment was abrogated in favor of making the "society" the owner of
creative works. The result? Creative production went down, and became
fossilized while the rest of the world moved forward. IT was one of many
components of the USSR's grand plans.

"Mandatory licensing" is one step towards that -- where it's the government,
not the creator, which dictates how a creative work is to be distributed. 

NOTHING prevents an artist from distributing an item for free. NOTHING. If
an artist signs their soul away to the RIAA, that's THEIR choice, not the
RIAA's. If an artist decides they never want to release another piece of music
to the public, and instead keep it in a vault private from everyone, that's
THEIR choice.

The choice MUST remain with the artist, or with the RIAA acting as an agent
of the artist. As non-sensical as those choices may seem to anyone else, we've
seen what happens when we go the other route. Y'all think "great music" is
being squealched by the RIAA? Let's go to socialized music (which is the
direction Russ is ultimately suggesting) and see what happens.

response 142 of 206:

Sep 22 15:43 UTC 2000

All healthy entities are self-serving.
It should be society's function to mitigate that innate egoism enough that
we build society without losing that egoism.

It is my opinion that the intent (if not the letter) of current intellectual
property law is to find such a balance between the good of the individual and
the good of the society.

It is my opinion that those who complain about the unfairness of the RIAA
would be best served finding something more constructive to do with their
time than bitch about not being able to get free music.

response 144 of 206:

Sep 22 18:59 UTC 2000

I would think not. It would go hard on you if you stole an ambulance 
even to help the victims of an accident. I think the issues would be
handled separately, in fact. You would have to answer to the theft.
Whatever you did as a "good Samaratin" would probably be considered
in the proceedings. It also depends on whether the owner of the property
you stole (boat, ambulance) wishes to prosecute. I don't think that
the law can punish someone for a theft unless the property owner
wishes to prosecute.