No ethical copyright owner should have a problem with someone making a copy
of such a work for their personal use. After all, the Fair Use doctrine is
there to forward the purpose behind such temporary protection in the
Constitution, which is to ensure progress in the arts and sciences.
Fair use does not permit distribution of a protected work for non-commercial
uses. There still is the factor of distribution of the work which results in
benefit to those it is distributed to.
Moore was definitely conveying misinformation in his statement about copying.
It is unfortunate that those connected with the entertainment cartel desire a
perpetual monopoly rather than progress in their industry. It is as if they
fear they will run out of material.
Smitty
On Tuesday 09 July 2002 10:34, you wrote:
> In general, I support intellectual property rights. However, you are
> permitted to tape things at home for your own use (this falls under
> 'Fair Use' in copyright law*). Even passing a copy around
> NON-COMMERCIALLY might be legal under Fair Use. The statement, "If the
> creator of the IP doesn't agree to copying, then the creation of
> unauthorized Divx files is simply theft." is incorrect. Making the DivX
> file is a legal act (protected by copyright law, in fact); shipping
> those DivX images around the Internet is a violation of copyright law.
>
> Calling it theft is misleading; it is a violation of copyright law
> (rather than a violation of a larceny statute), which is as bad as
> theft, but not quite the same thing.
>
> All legal issues aside, I would consider it unethical to copy a tape if
> I could go to a theater and watch the movie, or go to Blockbuster and
> rent the tape (theoretically helping the IP owners by pumping money into
> a channel from which they have already extracted money, when Blockbuster
> bought 15,000 copies of the tape). However, if the producers of
> Revolution OS said that their movie had had its run in theaters, and was
> never going to be released on VHS or DVD, how unethical would it be to
> copy it (yes, I know that it would still be illegal)?
>
>
> *I am not a lawyer. My 'working knowledge' of IP law comes from being a
> software engineer who has to worry about these things.
>
> --ronan
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