Re: FW: More ethics... (long, of course)

["Tracy Boyington" <tracy_boyington -at- okcareertech -dot- org>]

>>>KMcLauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com> 08/20/01 02:11PM >>

<< Once again. For documents that describe the use and abuse of a *product*, copyright is IRRELEVANT.  >>

But what about a document that tells you how to manipulate a product in order to break a "relevant" copyright?

<< Sklyarov probably won't be the last person nailed by those laws, just as people will continue to be nailed by drug laws, even though only pinheads and the corrupt still support prohibition. >>

Um... OK...

<< By contrast, if one of a million copies of your coded message is lying around (or perhaps I bought a copy from you...) and I decipher the code, then I have some information that I didn't have before... but YOU still have the information you had before, and you still have the use of it. I have not deprived you of the use of that information. By deciphering it, I don't suck it out of your head (or your hard disk). >>

If I understand the situation correctly, you (and our friend Dimitri) may not be depriving Andrew the use of the information, but you are depriving him of the ability to sell that information. 

<< You "break" an algorithm and all you've done is gotten a peak at what was hidden. The algorithm still works just as it always did, for anybody who cares to employ it. >>

But if you break the algorithm and use that information to deprive someone else of their legal right (and no matter how much one disagrees with it, copyright law is still there and still valid), you are doing more than getting a peek. You are giving that peek to potential customers. Like they say at the "all you can eat" salad bar, I sold you a salad. I didn't sell you the right to distribute salad to your three friends. Or are you against that too? ;-)

<< It's not stolen. He still has the use of it. If he hasn't included the source, you still can't directly use his technology. You can do a lot of work to reverse-engineer or imitate, but so what? He's already in the market and, presumably, making money. By the time you can figure out what he did, he should be in his next revision, with more bells and whistles. >>

Kevin, you are stuck in your own paradigm of the documentation as an accessory to the "real" product. In the eBook case, the eBook *is* the product. From what I've read on techwr-l (haven't been following the case IRL), the work Sklyarov was arrested for distributing would allow one to make unauthorized copies of eBooks. Copies that presumably would have been purchased otherwise. Do I understand it correctly? If so, your theory that "no one is hurt" doesn't hold water. 

<< Techy-writers will continue to write instructions and explanations where copyright is irrelevant, and the next versions of the product invalidate the instructions for the previous versions. >>

Again, Kevin, please step out of your box. For some of us, what we write IS the product, and copyright is VERY relevant.


~~~~~
Tracy Boyington     tracy_boyington -at- okcareertech -dot- org
Oklahoma Department of Career & Technology Education
Stillwater, OK          http://www.okcareertech.org/cimc



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