Aminet Copyright Upload Dilemma

[Roj]

I think everyone acknowledges that the law doesn't preclude just reading through the source code. What's the proper course of action in the event the reader gets an idea from the source code and re-implements it in his or her own project? Where is the line drawn? The idea, which is the property of another author, is still being taken advantage of, and worse, claimed by someone else. But without the combination of the Copyrighted idea and the reader's ideas, nothing new could be created from previously owned ideas.

So, if I were to read through source code, get an idea from it and rewrite it my own way, what's the difference? It's still their idea, not mine. I'm still taking it. I'm still using it for my own purposes.

None of us would be able to write software for any computer if we hadn't taken ideas from other people at some point. In an ideal world, ideas are only taken from sources that are free to be shared. But what's being talked about in this thread is taking ideas from source that possibly isn't free to be shared. The implication is that all who read the source code are then obligated to forget everything they've read when they start working on their own project.

When I look at it this way, the whole thing starts to sound silly, doesn't it.


How's this for the deep thought of the day:

*Everything you know is the result of your own intellectual abilities and experiences combined with other people sharing information with you. Therefore, limiting the sharing of knowledge limits knowledge, and that, in any forum, is a very questionable end.

*I just made that up. Therefore it's mine. Don't use it, repeat it, or copy it. Ever. :-P

[Roj]

mdwh2 wrote:
But ideas can't be copyrighted, so this is legal - this silly situation doesn't exist.

Yet people can and do get sued, fined or, in the worst case, jailed when they're able to defeat the idea behind DRM. It's a very narrow example maybe, but it is a valid example of an idea that can't be distributed freely. So saying ideas can't be copyrighted isn't necessarily true as a blanket statement anymore.

Nope, we were talking about taking someone's code and redistributing it with modifications.

It's the with modifications part that's under scrutiny. If code, or to follow your example, a song, is modified in some capacity, it's no longer just one person's intellectual property. Does the fact that it now contains parts of work done by others wholly invalidate the new production? If it's just copied verbatim, then sure, something must be done to protect the original work.

But how many times does listening to one song remind you of another, or sound like another? Weird Al does it all the time, and some artists have gotten very angry with him over some of the things he's done although that's a different category. He's still within the law. How far do you go to protect creative works? When the result is the loss of equally creative works, in my opinion you've gone too far.

[Roj]

If I read this right, Dietmar is expecting everyone to follow the rules. The rules are the rules and that's just the way it is. It's an admirable, if utopian viewpoint.

On the other hand, most everyone else understands that uploading source code, like leaving keys in the ignition with instructions on using your car, and expecting those instructions to be followed, is only going to lead to disappointment. That's reality. It's just the way people are.

Knowing that, accepting it, and being smart about what to expose to the public and what not to, are about all the owner of whatever property is being exposed to the public can do to avoid being disappointed.

Weird rules are an owner's privilege. Become an owener, become an anarchist or pursue an ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless social organization based on common ownership.

You called me naive, but truly it's naive to expect any instructions accompanying freely available source code to be adhered to by the general public.

I think Copyright infringement happened like five minutes after the invention of the first computer. The switch was flipped, and then somebody copied something they weren't supposed to. Seriously, my point is that Copyright infringement and the computer are so closely related that they pretty much go hand-in-hand. Whether anyone chooses to accept that or not doesn't matter. That's the reality of it.

Knowing that, and expecting the world to suddenly change because you want your intellectual property handled according to a set of instructions is just not having your feet grounded firmly in reality. I'm not saying it's right that it is that way. I'm just pointing out that it is that way, and it will be that way for years to come.


@Ed

If you weren't confused before, I bet you're confused after listening to us!  :lol: