[lbo-talk] Dumb QOTD: What kind of laborproducesintellectualproperty?

Joseph Catron jncatron at gmail.com
Wed Sep 7 16:55:34 PDT 2011


On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 1:36 AM, SA <s11131978 at gmail.com> wrote:

if someone was systematically putting up every issue of LBO, I suspect Doug
> would call a lawyer, or at least threaten the guy with one.
>


> I'm not sure I would have done it if I could have just peeked at the pirate
> website - esp if I didn't know Doug.
>

I hope Doug won't hold it against me when I point out that the reason SA can use the subjunctive here is a lack of demand. If enough people wanted to read every issue for LBO for free, the Internet would be full of BitTorrents for it. And there wouldn't be much Doug's lawyer could do about it, unless s/he were more clever than the combined legal forces of the music and film industries.

This conversation seems to focus exclusively on the question of "ought." I would suggest at least a partial consideration of "is," specifically the reality that having one's work stolen is both a sign of commercial success and an inevitable result of it. In the world of the Pirate Bay, anyone advocating models of intellectual property that exclude massive theft is spinning fairy tales.

-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."



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