[105228] in Cypherpunks
Re: IP: Crunch Time for Y2K Suppliers (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Declan McCullagh)
Sun Nov 8 22:25:07 1998
Date: Sun, 08 Nov 1998 22:12:05 -0500
To: "William J.Hartwell" <billh@ibag.com>,
cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer)
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19981108153628.007bd430@mail.xroads.com>
Reply-To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
At 03:36 PM 11-8-98 -0700, William J.Hartwell wrote:
>I am glad Declan is able to pay his rent by writing these articles and hope
>it continues. Wouldn't it be sad if we could only get our news from the NY
>times or the WSJ? If people like Declan and others at wired cant make a
>living that may be what's in store.
>
>You would think cypherpunks would be more than happy to try and support the
>efforts of wired and the like.
[snip]
These are all reasonable points.
News organizations are generally for-profit entities. It's called
capitalism. Nothing wrong with it.
It's wonderful and cozy and social and all that when groups of thousands of
individuals (such as the ones on IP) can view an article in full. But
losing hundreds or thousands of visits a day can make the difference
between being able to hire another reporter or expand the site's coverage.
Or in extreme cases, being able to pay the rent.
Willfully redistributing copyrighted material in violation of fair use
principles is, depending on the value, also a federal crime. Redistributing
a $1 article to thousands of people would be a felony. (Note I don't
endorse this law, but it's useful to know what the law is.)
I'm not sure I like intellectual property laws in general -- like some
libertarians, I might prefer a contract-based system. But for now I support
civil laws to punish copyright infringements, and it seems to me it's
difficult to argue that redistributing entire articles isn't one.
Besides, and more importantly, it's also rude.
-Declan
