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

[pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <38FD27C3.B36AAC31@inetnebr.com>,
Roy and/or Janet Miller  <millers@inetnebr.com> wrote:
 
> Paul Schlyter wrote:
>
>> Now lets consider another situation: suppose you did live in Nazi
>> Germany under the rule of Hitler.  Also suppose you heard someone, a
>> friend, a family member, or a stranger, say something unfavourble
>> about Hitler.  Then it would have bene your legal duty to inform
>> Gestapo about this.  Suppose you didn't do it -- then you surely did
>> commit an illegal act, which could easily have sentenced you to to
>> prison, perhaps even to death.  But would you have done something
>> immoral, just because it happened to be illegal in that country at
>> that time?
>> 
> 
> No, because there are times when it would be immoral to obey laws. For
> example, what you cited. Or if the Gestapo comes to my home and asks if
> I'm harboring Jews (assuming I was) to give them the truth would be to
> violate a higher law. And that was what the Nuremberg trials were all
> about. (I misspelled that didn't I?)
 
Which really was my point.  Some people here seem to want to claim
"it's immoral because it's illegal", but it isn't quite as simple as
that.
 
> Perhaps the best way to look at this question of copyrights is that it
> is impolite to copy without asking first. Someone used the analogy of
> two shovels. Even if I'm not using my shovel, and haven't in years (it's
> time to take it out and work the garden again), even if I didn't mind
> you using it, to just TAKE it, without asking, is rude. As well as
> illegal.
 
Yes, of course -- but what's most rude about it?  Taking the shovel,
or entering your shed looking for the shovel?  Suppose I just entered
the shed, lookded around, and walked out, taking nothing -- wouldn't
that alone be rude too?
 
And what if the house has been deserted for 10+ years and is unlikely
to ever be inhabited again?  What if the owner of the house is
nowhere to be found - or if the owner isn't a single person but, say,
a big compay, and it would be difficult to find a person within that
company who even knew about the house?  So there you are: the house
is deserted since long, the owner is hard or impossible to locate --
but those two shovels are still there.....
 
This would be the equivalent of some piece of software which no
longer is sold, the company who owned the copyright is out of business
since many years, and the owner of the copyright is impossible to locate...
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Now, if the owner of the company is still accessible one should *of*
*course* first ask for permission before copying a piece of copyrighted
work.  This is why I spent some time locating Bob S-C and Mike Laumer,
asking them for permission *before* I released copies of their S-C
Assembler and Flash! Integer Basic Compiler.
 
The "Red Book" is a little trickier: who should you ask for permission?
Obviously someone at Apple Computer, but who?  Almost everyone at Apple
Computer today neither know of nor care about that "Red Book".
 
-- 
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