Re: Asimov Site

["Kelli Halliburton" <kelli217@crosswinds.not>]

"Frank Townsend" <ftownsen@iamdigex.net> wrote in message
news:o_Ys5.1860$J91.180988@dca1-nnrp2.news.digex.net...

> But control (ie, the right to exclude others) *is* still the intent.  That
> is why one of the remedies is non-monetary (an injunction) and why an
> injunction is available even if there are no money damages and statutory
> damages are forfeit because of failure to register.  Remember, the author
is
> not *required* to publish.  If it were only about money, publication and
> sale would be a requirement, but they aren't.  If you hack my site and
> download unpublished files on my server, I can sue you and stop you, even
> though I never attempted or even planned to publish or sell my work.
>
> Go back and read the reference I gave you.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Copyright is not a positive right, those being generally frowned upon by the
principles and philosophies upon which this nation was founded. It is a
negative right. In other words, a copyright doesn't give you the right to
make money, it prevents *others* from attempting to do so.

A positive right is a right *to* something, a negative right is a right *to
be free of* something. An example of a positive right is to say, for
example, that everyone has a right to a color TV. A negative right, on the
other hand, is to say that if you do already have a color TV, you have the
right to keep it and not have it stolen. This is an example of what's talked
about when we mention "life, liberty, and property," this being an example
of 'property' rights.

You don't have a right to live, you have the right not to have that life
taken away from you. You don't have the right to liberty, you have the right
not to be deprived of that liberty.

Is this sufficiently clear?

Copyright exists to prevent others from making use of a work to the
detriment of the copyright holder. In other words, no one else can make
money from it or use it in any way other than "fair use". Even if the
copyright holder isn't making money from it.

It's still inefficiently implemented in the case of software. I still
consider certain violations of the pertaining laws to be civil disobedience.