Re: "My dad is a pirate."

[Banty]

In article <13rui7ilqmgq4d0@news.supernews.com>, El Tux says...
>
>On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:19:37 +0100, Alexander Terekhov wrote:
>
>> El Tux wrote:
>> 
>> [... Dowling v. United States, 473 U.S. 207 (1985) ...]
>> 
>> 
>> Oh dear El Tux, that (1985) was long before December 16, 1997, when
>> President Clinton signed HR 2265 -- the No Electronic Theft Act -- into
>> law.
>
>Dear Alexander, that doesn't matter in the least because we're
>discussing concepts here, not legal definitions which, BTW, tend to
>use common words in uncommon ways. The poster cited a USSC judge's
>comment to support the *concept* that file-sharing is stealing, and I
>quoted another to show that not all USSC judges share the same
>view. Simple black-and-white cases rarely make it to the USSC so it's
>commonplace for the justices to disagree with each other. One can find
>a quote to support either side of just about anything that's been
>brought before the Supreme Court.

Your quoting a 1985 case on it, though, is akin to quoting traffic rules
designed to keep horses from being frightened, in a 2008 auto traffic
discussion.  Completely different time, completely different concerns.  In 1985
there was not an internet or other medium that enabled mega-copying that would
drive the market cost of any creation that can be expressed in bits, to nearly
zero.

>
>As for the No Electronic Theft Act and the later DMCA, voters never
>asked for either. Those were all but written by the music and movie
>industries and rushed through by their pet politicians. I do not
>believe these laws represent the will of the American people and
>neither, apparently, do most of the American people. 

Are you so sure about that?  Once you leave your cozy abode in the linux groups,
whoa - looky, people are arguing with you!!  Maybe you need to get out more.

The congress that passed that law are those elected by you and me in a
representative democracy.

>The rather high
>percentage of the population that's engaged in file-sharing, 

A certain segment does that simply because it's free and easy.

>the
>surging sales in portable media players capable of holding ten times
>more music than the average American buys in a lifetime, the high
>demand for terabyte hard drives, and the strong demand for ever-faster
>broadband all suggest that if we put it to the voters, they would
>repeal the DMCA and NETA, explicitly legalize file-sharing, and
>probably make some other long-needed changes in copyright law to
>restore its original purpose of stimulating artistic and scientific
>creativity.
>
>If you want people to respect the law, then they must first be able to
>respect the process that created it.

If you want to change the law, use that process to change it.  But the hitch is
- you'll have to make convincing arguments, not just point to how many
file-copying buddies you have.  I think that's what grieves ya.

Banty