RE: More ethics... (long, of course)

[KMcLauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com]

Andrew said:

>Any intellectual work - software, documentation, art, etc. is protected
>from stealing and misappropriation. 

Yes, legally it is. Morally or ethically it seems 
to be another story. *Functionally* it is definitely 
becoming another story. As I said, people who would 
not dream of breaking into your house or mugging 
you for your wallet, just don't see "intellectual 
property as equivalent to physical property.

The party line for many decades has been to equate 
the two, but it doesn't hold up. It becomes easier 
to dismiss the failed comparison now that more 
people are exploring and positing the alternate 
models that can fill the gap.

>> The other stuff, like copyright is artificial 
>> construct, brought about by lobbying or for 
>> somebody's political benefit, and will eventually 
>> be outmoded, rendered moot. People are already 
>> demonstrating en-masse that they don't really 
>> see the utility and are no longer willing to 
>> extend reciprocity for such rules.
>
>Cool - then would you please write documentation for my 
>company for free.
>Because - you're [sic] work isn't worth PAYING for.

Either you don't realize that there's a discontinuity 
between what was discussed and what you are now 
suggesting... or you DO realize it but are hoping 
that other people will miss it if you "talk" fast 
enough.  But just for fun, I'll address it as if 
it were pertinent.

My current employer seems to think it IS worth paying 
for. So will my next employer. So would you, in the 
appropriate situation.
My work is generally about specific products and systems 
-- notably, those made by my employer. What I write is 
actually NOT much use to most people. It just happens 
that for the purposes of my employer's business, my 
material IS valuable to people who buy and use our 
products.  Those lovely people pay money for our products, 
and they use my documents to help them set up the 
systems (install, configure... the usual), and then to 
get the most out of our product in ongoing use.

My documents are worth nothing-or-less to people who 
are not:

a) buying and using our products or,

b) evaluating our products, pending a purchase decision.

To anybody else, they are just clutter, or something 
to put under the corner of that wobbly table.

The set of docs that I'm writing today will 
have a useful life of a year or two, but will 
be updated and superseded in half that time, 
as our product gets revamped, improved, re-positioned...
whatever. Copyright is irrelevant in that 
situation. The same applies to people writing 
prospectus documents, annual reports and other 
one-time or special-purpose or supersedable documents.
What's the point or value of copyright when the 
text is not worth stealing and will soon be 
outdated?  The only reason my company might 
pay lawyers to pursue you on a copyright violation 
is if some rectally inverted bureaucrat were to 
somehow tie that action to "perserving our trademark", 
or some such.  Otherwise, it's a non-issue.

Now, if you were to use some of our text to 
MISREPRESENT us or our products and services, 
then I'd say that legal action was fair ball, 
but that's not usually the case.

I would estimate that the very same applies to most 
of your (or your company's) work, and to that of most 
of the people on this mailing list. The few who are 
actually publishing books and who hope to see some 
royalties come in, by contrast, *do* have a strong 
interest in copyright. (For the purpose of this discussion, 
I make a distinction between printing docs to accompany 
software or hardware, versus printing and distributing 
books for retail sale.)

I'd guess that for the vast majority of us (and for 
our employers), copyright has little or no bearing 
on our livelihood. 

>Copyrights protect authors, artists, etc. from stealing. The same
>protection that guards MeloNasty, Inc. from stealing your art also
>protects Adobe from Duncan Hackerbutt from breaking their software and
>distributing illegal copies or ways to acquire illegal usage. 

I don't deny that that's what copyright is intended 
to do. I also admit that in many cases it still 
performs some of that function. However, I made a 
point that is fundamental, but that may not be 
getting through the static: 

Copyright, as a "right" is different in kind from 
the fundamental rights that people need in order 
to live in peace and engage in commerce. At some 
level, even the most uneducated or uninterested 
people recognize this, which is ONE large reason 
why so many of them ignore it, and why I suggested 
that the paradigm is in the process of failing and 
will be replaced.

>> Right OFF! You want him shut up, buy him off. 
>> If he doesn't STAY bought, THEN use force against 
>> him for breach of contract. But, don't use 
>> force as your first choice means of shutting 
>> him up. Initiiation of force is the easy, sleazy 
>> way out and invites others to do the same to you...
>> reciprocity, remember?
>
>Force is often the only way to make intentions clear. This is 
>why we have
>to drop bombs on people like Slobodan Milosovich. He won't stop until
>there is a real threat. You're right in that force should be second or
>third choice - but it must always remain a choice. Force or the mere
>threat of force (be that physical, legal, or otherwise) is the only way
>some people will be compelled into responsibility. 

I think we can drop that offshoot of the discussion 
right now. Milosovich (acting through agents... soldiers) 
and the people helping him have already initiated force 
against others. Force used against them is a response, 
not an initiation.  If you want to make some example 
or distinction that is relevant to a discussion of 
copyright, then use a local example that has some parity 
and relevance -- perhaps robbery or vandalism.

>> It (PDF) wasn't stolen. It was examined. What was blabbed 
>> to the world was the manner in which it was flawed.
>
>If I told a pack of criminals how to break into your house - 
>am I liable
>for the break-in? YES. That's called aiding and abetting. Its 
>a crime, its
>punishable. 

There are accredited SCHOOLS that teach people how 
to open locks without using the keys. Let's arrest 
all the locksmith instructors.

I made -- or tried to -- the point that the functional 
difference is between physical property and so-called 
intellectual property. If you failed to understand the 
distinction, that's probably my fault for not being 
clear.

Let me try this:

If you break into a home or a place of business 
and damage or remove some physical property, 
everybody can likely agree that you have initiated 
force against the owner of the property. That's 
why laws against such actions are ubiquitous 
and sustainable. Everybody except a few criminals 
supports those laws because they map directly to 
"natural" rights... rights we can all understand 
and support. We all understand reciprocity (whether 
or not we can articulate it).

If you break into a home or a place of business 
and acquire information that was protected by 
that home or place of business, then everybody 
can likely agree that you have initiated 
force against the owner of the property.

If you encode some information on some arrangements 
of electrons, photons, etc., and that act happens 
to reveal some information that another party 
prefers not to have revealed... well, tough titty.
No force has been initiated.  I would say you 
had a point if your investigations involved 
physically projecting energy through a person or 
a premises, though even that might be arguable.
(So, if somebody is shining X-rays through my 
house in order to learn something from the resulting 
diffraction patterns... I do have a problem with 
that.)

In general, the owner of the info should have 
physically protected it, if they didn't want 
it revealed.

>
>> Throw a rock in any direction and you'll hit 
>> a company that is using LINUX on their servers.
>
>Right - because Linux along with some other open source 
>technologies have
>been adopted by people with money and resources. That was my 
>point. That
>until there is buy in from the commercial sector - a technology doesn't
>stand a chance. 
>
>And open source is not an excuse to rip off other people's 
>technologies. 

Normally, I would go back and dig up your earlier 
text that prompted me to make my response, but 
let's just say that we're not talking about the same 
things here, and at least one of us seems to have 
misunderstood. We can take it offline if there's 
anything to be gained.

>Kevin, I too would like to believe that somewhere, there is a 
>utopia where
>people respect each other and can build great things without 
>fear of those
>things being stolen or misused. But, this utopia does not exist. Some
>people honestly believe that the universe owes them something and that
>they can have anything for free. It just doesn't work that 
>way. You cannot
>feed your children with shareware and more than a company can pay its
>employees with good intentions. 

Since I said NONE of the above, I have to wonder 
why you'd attribute any of it to me. Most of what 
you said in the above paragraph has nothing to do 
with a discussion of copyright and why it is 
starting to fail as an institution -- and why that 
failure is legitimate.  

>Copyrights and other protections are there to help ensure those that
>invest effort and/or money into something can reap the rewards. If you
>take that structure away, you will have dismantled one of the 
>foundations
>of capitalism. Why would ANYBODY or ANY organization invest money and
>resources into something if there was nothing to gain from 
>doing so? Why
>would I ever write a document if my client didn't pay me for my work.

? Is this a straw-man, or an actual misunderstanding?
If you are writing technical manuals to help people 
install, configure and make use of equipment or software, 
then your client will pay you because their customers 
require that the company include such documents with the product.
Maybe it works differently where you live, but MY 
employer wants his customers to have a happy and 
profitable experience using our product, so he pays 
me to tell those customers how to do so. We really 
don't CARE if somebody else tells them the same 
things in a third-party document... as long as nobody 
misrepresents...

Copyright has nothing to do with it. The documents are 
of no earthly use to anybody who isn't using our 
products. They will be of MARGINAL use to somebody 
who buys the next version of our product -- but 
of course, I'll have produced revised docs by then.
Nobody in his right mind would want to copy my 
docs. They're useless without the product.

>In other words - its NOT going to happen no matter how much you and
>Napster want it to. 

Given how you totally garbled what I was 
saying earlier, I could answer this, but 
I might not be answering what you think 
you are saying.

Let me just observe that Napster (which I 
never used -- I'm just not that interested 
in music...) has been replaced by more 
peer-to-peer arrangements and the volume of 
file trading has only increased since Napster 
took it on the chin.

>Companies, like individuals, have a right to defend their 
>investments and
>products. Its just that simple. If you tell people how to 
>steal something
>you are just as guilty as those who do the actual stealing and 
>you should
>go to jail. 
>
>Nobody is saying "don't test" these products. Test them. If you find a
>bug, report it to the company like a responsible, decent 
>person. 

HAH!  If I'm a competitor and I want people to choose MY 
protection scheme, I certainly do want to discredit the 
other guy's claims of security. Wise consumers everywhere 
are not going to just take my word for it. I have to PROVE it.

>Don't go
>to a hackers convention and tell the world how to exploit that bug and
>then expect the company to just roll over and say "hey, thanks 
>for costing
>us 38 billion in sales, we sure do appreciate your help breaking our
>software and ruining our company. You're a swell guy. Have a cupcake on
>us." 

Wow. This casts the discussion in a new light. 
I wasn't aware that Adobe had lost 38 billion.
Jeez. You'd think if they had that many eggs in 
one basket, they'd have made a stronger basket.

Yes, yes, I know. I'm just throwing your silly 
super-exaggeration back in your face, in hopes 
that you will stop relying on it in reasoned 
discussion. Thanks.   :-)

>As somebody who builds and test security systems, I can tell 
>you all right
>now that there are a lot of holes in software still out there. But I
>wouldn't even think of publicizing that without FIRST telling 
>the owner of
>that product and giving them a chance to repair it. 

Are you really, really certain that the Russian 
company did NOT tell Adobe?

Besides, I'm sure it was a business decision to 
go public. The Russians wanted to demonstrate their 
prowess in order to sell their own products and 
services.  "You see? We prove that we know what 
we are doing."

By the way, would you like to arrest the various 
folks who have broken the various PKI encryption 
algorithms over the years?  Certainly, companies 
like RSA and others have been considerably 
inconvenienced when individuals and groups have 
stood up before cryptography conventions, and in 
other venues, to announce that they had either 
finessed or brute-forced the encryption standards 
of the day.  What sort of torture would you 
recommend for those people?  

Of course, the REST of us were glad to learn that 
formerly secure algorithms/strengths-of-algorithm 
were no longer secure.

What Sklyarov's company COULD have done is to 
clandestinely contact other companies and people 
who would have an interest in breaking PDF 
protection without it being generally 
known that PDF protection was not reliable.

Again, if you want to protect your data, keep it on 
your premises. If it needs to go off-premises, then 
physically deliver it to trusted persons. Anybody 
stealing it from your premises or from the pockets 
of your people is initiating force against you/them 
and should be dealt with.

If you leave it lying around in public and somebody 
figures out the puzzle in which you wrapped it... 
well, more power to 'em.

As I suggested in a previous post, the model is 
changing. The vested interests may in fact 
prevail, but the tide is against them. People 
do recognize a difference between physical assault, 
theft, vandalism, etc. versus ethereal constructs 
of "intellectual property".

One of the more brilliant people I know,  
made a name and a career for himself in nuclear 
engineering, then went back to school for a law 
degree and quickly became a highly paid go-to 
trouble-shooter intellectual-property lawyer at 
a prestigious firm. After several years of success, 
he is looking for something else. He told me, 
"I moved on from nuclear engineering when it 
 became humdrum and no longer challenging. I'm 
 getting out of this intellectual property 
 business because I realize that the structure 
 is built on sand. I can't be somebody I admire, 
 doing this stuff, no matter how much they're 
 willing to pay me." 

/kevin

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