[Baron Munchausen]

Geo,

You've almost got it. Copyright would work if the original 'public contract' were restored. The deal was that the original creator/compiler of the information got to control it for a limited time. Then it was public property. Corporate suits are trying to turn this into feudalism where we pay them forever. The right to control commercial exploitation of information has been mutated into 'financial damage' from losing 'potential' income and then mutated again into an imagined 'right' to the income that they think they should be getting. Feudalism didn't work with 'real' property, it sure isn't gonna work with 'intellectual' property. Those peasants went right ahead and poached game from the 'King's Land' when they were starving. Even the threat of mutilation (amputation of hands like the current wave of radicals in Islamic countries advocate for stealing) or outright death did not prevent them. Trying to make us all serfs on the corporate info-plantation is also doomed to failure and people instinctively recognize the unfairness of it. Since the current 'law' is completely contrary to the facts of life they ignore it. Just like the peasants who ignored the law that demanded they starve rather than go get the food they knew was there.

[ July 16, 2003, 15:38: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]