Re:When a newspaper “rips off” your blog, then taunts you ab...
by chc on Wednesday March 30, 2011 @08:50PM
(#2389949)
> And yes you can steal an idea, people get thrown out of higher education everyday for stealing someone's idea.
No, they get thrown out for doing something against the rules of the school. The fact that they get thrown out does not prove that an idea was meaningfully stolen (as opposed to the simpler explanation, in which the student experienced a lapse of integrity in following citation requirements).
A thought experiment: If I believe that we have a duty to repay society for all that it has done for us, then in order not to be a thief, am I required to raise Immanuel Kant from the dead and ask him for permission every time I want to bring it up in conversation? Obviously, no. I'm allowed to believe the same thing as Immanuel Kant and it is not theft. If I got my ideas from Kant but tried to deny it, that would be dishonest, and he would still be the originator, but ideas aren't really property.
This isn't defending what the Long Island Press did, but you're going too far in the other direction.
No, they get thrown out for doing something against the rules of the school. The fact that they get thrown out does not prove that an idea was meaningfully stolen (as opposed to the simpler explanation, in which the student experienced a lapse of integrity in following citation requirements).
A thought experiment: If I believe that we have a duty to repay society for all that it has done for us, then in order not to be a thief, am I required to raise Immanuel Kant from the dead and ask him for permission every time I want to bring it up in conversation? Obviously, no. I'm allowed to believe the same thing as Immanuel Kant and it is not theft. If I got my ideas from Kant but tried to deny it, that would be dishonest, and he would still be the originator, but ideas aren't really property.
This isn't defending what the Long Island Press did, but you're going too far in the other direction.