Re: Apple II Reference Manual ("Red Book")

[CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney)]

On 17 Apr 2000 17:42:10 +0200, pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter)
wrote:

>In article <38fa44d2.842863496@news>,
>Jeff Blakeney <CUTblakeney@home.com> wrote:
>> All I'm doing is pointing out that making it available without the
>> copyright holders permission is illegal.
> 
>Which of course is such an obvious truth that the point doesn't
>even have to be made.

So why are we talking about this then?  Apparently you agree with me.

Now if we could just get people to label and warn people about the
illegal stuff we'll be doing much better.  Not perfect, but at least
better.

>> or trying to justify distributing it illegally or something similar.
> 
>Well, there are some justifications in doing this.

You can justify it all you want, it still won't become legal.  If you
feel you have valid reasons for ignoring a copyright, then go ahead
but don't try to convince people that what you are doing is legal,
admit that you are breaking the law and don't get upset if someone
calls you a thief.

By the way, the part of my previous message you were replying to was
poorly written on my part and didn't come out meaning what I had
intended.

As to the rest of your post, I don't want to create a reply that is
over 200 lines long so I'm going to try to cut this short.  Besides,
most of what I was going to say is just repeating what I've already
said many times and the points I'm covering below don't really apply
to what we've been talking about anyways.

Police and courts are in place to enforce the law, not defend it.
Prisons are there as a method of punishment for some people who break
the law.

I would hardly say I'm being "intense" in discussing this.  I'm simply
replying to messages just like I do any other message.  If I was being
intense, I'd probably be using much stronger language.  :-)

As to my saying that it doesn't matter how old a copyright is, I
thought it was fairly obvious that if a copyright expires, that the
product is no longer copyrighted.  If you ask me how old the copyright
on a product that was copyrighted 200 years ago is, I would tell you
that the product is no longer copyrighted.

As to distributing copyrighted works with the owner's permission, that
is just a silly question.  If the owner has changed the copyright,
then of course it is legal to distribute it in the new way(s) the
owner allows.

Finally, in relation to the use of my time, I'm talking about working
on my own original software that currently doesn't exist for the Apple
II.  I'm not talking about writing a version of someones else's
product.

I'm better off spending my time working on NEW software than I am
spending time trying to get stuff reclassified.  There are people that
either aren't programmers at all or others who could contribute by
getting stuff reclassified while others continue to produce new stuff.
Seems like a real efficient use of resources to me.

By the way, producing a product that does exactly the same thing as
another one can be just as illegal as pirating the original product.

But like I said, most of this doesn't relate to the discussion of
whether putting the Red Book on a web page is legal or not.

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