[PLUG] Abe Lincoln would likely laugh at Eisner

Bill Spears bspears at easystreet.com
Fri Mar 29 23:49:48 UTC 2002


Nathan Meyers wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 29, 2002 at 09:18:08AM -0800, Russ Johnson wrote:
> 
>>On Fri, 2002-03-29 at 08:23, Nathan Meyers wrote:
>>
>>>Not that I agree with Eisner and with the
>>>massive subversion of copyright law now going on, but infringement does
>>>deprive copyright holders of income.
>>>
>>Not if the person with the "illegal" copy wouldn't have bought it.
>>
> 
> Ah, so the fact they would not have bought it entitles them to a free
> copy?
> 
> And people wonder why Eisner's comments find a sympathetic audience?
> 
> Nathan
> 


He didn't say they were entitled to it, just that the copyright owner 
suffered no loss, which seems self-evident given his assumption.

Intellectual prop. is quite different from the usual sort.  It's more 
like a grant of monopoly from a gov.  After all if I sell you a car, I 
don't have to mention fair use.  When I buy a book, I can do anything I 
want with it as physical property, it's only when I begin to intefere 
with the monopoly right to publish that I run into trouble.

What Eisner is asking for is absolutely without precedent and 
outrageous.  He's saying that because he can't enforce his right of 
monopoly over copying, the whole rest of society should be forced by 
government power to change the very technology at the heart of the 
digital revolution.  It's as if someone who had the basil monopoly for 
the US insisted on sensors in your cooking pots to make sure you weren't 
infringing his grant.  Also, we'd have potted plant inspectors, checking 
your windowsill to make sure you weren't growing your own.

Any purported right that generates such a monstrous interference with 
other better established rights is clearly no right.






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