[PvK]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
...Which would require the copyright owners relinquishing their rights to their creations to the public domain, which makes downloading them for free no longer an issue of theft at all.

Exactly.

It still does not change the fact that music etc. can be copyrighted, thus making acquiring it illegally be stealing it.

Sure it does. A new concept akin to copyright could give you the exclusive right to keep it to yourself and not publish it, or to offer it in ways that people can't copy, if you can pull that off somehow without recourse to lawsuits, and to be recognized and rewarded by society for your creation, by mechanics to be agreed upon. But it absolutely changes your right to claim "stealing", because it would no longer considered "property" by anyone. Once you published something in a trivially copiable form, others would have the right to share it around, and you'd be happy, because more people would appreciate your work, and the new mechanism would give you more fame and fortune.

PvK

[ December 04, 2003, 02:01: Message edited by: PvK ]