Re:Student sues Amazon after Kindle eats his homework
by andreyf on Friday July 31, 2009 @12:34AM
(#733765)
A better comparison would be if you bought a computer from Apple and were using iWork to write some notes, and then Apple decided to delete the notes you had been writing without your permission and without warning.
Agreed, this is a much better comparison! :)
I don't really understand what you mean when you say "semantics aside"
By "semantics", I was referring to the word "property". I mean that if I sell you a loaf of bread, it's a transaction governed by a nearly disjoint set of laws than if I sell you a poem or program that I wrote.
For example, I can't sell you a loaf of bread and force you to eat it on a Monday, but I can sell you a DRM-ed program that only runs on Mondays (enforced by people with heavy sticks and shiny guns ;)).
If our goal is creating a productivity-maximizing society, I think enforcing some restrictions of copyright are a good idea, as long as they "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" [1], but current copyright law seems as if it might over-reach that. What I would love to see is a real debate about where the line should be drawn.
Agreed, this is a much better comparison! :)
I don't really understand what you mean when you say "semantics aside"
By "semantics", I was referring to the word "property". I mean that if I sell you a loaf of bread, it's a transaction governed by a nearly disjoint set of laws than if I sell you a poem or program that I wrote.
For example, I can't sell you a loaf of bread and force you to eat it on a Monday, but I can sell you a DRM-ed program that only runs on Mondays (enforced by people with heavy sticks and shiny guns ;)).
If our goal is creating a productivity-maximizing society, I think enforcing some restrictions of copyright are a good idea, as long as they "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" [1], but current copyright law seems as if it might over-reach that. What I would love to see is a real debate about where the line should be drawn.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause