On 02/13/2013 03:21 AM, Louigi Verona wrote:
Your thinking is in the right direction. Indeed, if you are given
a book under contract, then you have to abide by the contract. But
let's say you decided to break the agreement and copied the book
on the Internet or gave it to your friends. All those people made
no contract with the author and thus they cannot be and should not
be bound by the contract. What copyright does is bind third
parties, which never agreed to the contract.
There are other cases. Public broadcasting is one. You turn on
your TV and see Harry Potter. You were not presented with any
contract. Why should you be bound by any conditions? If the author
of Harry Potter wanted to distribute her book only under contract
obligations, she should not have let it broadcast on TV.
The other case is the one I mentioned - someone breaking a
contract.
There are other options, like accidents. You leave a book on a
bench. Unless the book itself contains a full blown contract in
it, there is no way for Joe who finds the book to know. In fact,
even if the contract is in the book, Joe did not sign it.
Additionally, some things are just out there. You invent
something. The other person sees it. He has no contract with you.
Why should he restrict actions with his own body and his own
property? What legitimate reason is there to not act on a new
knowledge you have?
Finally, if each time you enter a store and decide to buy a DVD,
you were explicitly told that you will not simply be able to share
copies, but that you should agree to not use the knowledge you
gain from the DVD and act as if you have no such knowledge, I am
not sure most people would agree.
That's why things have copyright notices on them that are very
specific in their form and location.
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Staat heißt das kälteste aller kalten Ungeheuer. Kalt lügt es auch;
und diese Lüge kriecht aus seinem Munde: 'Ich, der Staat, bin das Volk.'
- [Friedrich Nietzsche]