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and the property rights to my house are unimportant because the house is 20+ years old. oh wait.... something is wrong with that thought process, but I'll let
by braveo 9y ago
and the property rights to my house are unimportant because the house is 20+ years old.
oh wait.... something is wrong with that thought process, but I'll let you split another hair in your attempt at a meaningful dichotomy.
- jhasse 9y agoIf I steal your house, that means that you lost it. The same isn't true for the code, as Blizzard would still also have it (along with the right to distribute binary copies of it, which is a million times more valuable).
- braveo 9y agothis distinction does not matter, if you steal my code and release it I can sue for damages exactly the way I would if you were to somehow steal my house.
- jhasse 9y agoWhat would be the damages for Blizzard if he had released the code?
- jhasse 9y agoWhat would be the damages for Blizzard if he had released the code?
- tripzilch 9y agoare you conflating ethics and law again, or do you honestly believe that a corporation, a legal construct, has moral rights like a human?? because I can make up constructs all day that suffered more damages either way.
- jhasse 9y ago> are you conflating ethics and law again, or do you honestly believe that a corporation, a legal construct, has moral rights like a human?? No.
- Dylan16807 9y agoYou don't see any difference between physical property and source code? I can't wait until you find out that sufficiently old intellectual property goes public, while sufficiently old houses don't go public! Have fun blaming that on me splitting hairs when it wasn't my idea. More seriously, intellectual property is a number of different things lumped together, and they serve different purposes. Copyright exists to encourage new works, and while you can make arguments that there are some benefits from copyright being long-lasting on the creation of works like books and pictures, it's basically impossible to make a similar argument for code.
- braveo 9y agoSo the splitting of the hairs you're attempting is to point out that IP typically expires at some point, and therefore we should all consider anything "old" as effectively having expired IP, regardless of whether that's true or not. Blizzard's IP hasn't expired, your argument here holds no water.
- wtetzner 9y agoIP is different that physical property. If someone takes something physical from anther person, the original owner loses that object. But if someone "takes" (copies) source code from someone, the original owner still has it. Now two people have it instead of one. By the way, I'm not making any arguments about morality. I'm just pointing out that IP is different from physical property in important ways.
- braveo 9y agoIt's an unimportant distinction for the purposes of this discussion. Under the law, damages have occurred, especially if someone then takes that source code and makes it public. So whether you have 2 copies or 1 copy or umpteen copies, if you've economically affected someone, you will lose that fight in court. But this is not relevant to this discussion and I think we should keep on topic. The point is this: Dylan16807 is just trying to rationalize something that he wants, which is for the source code to be public. It doesn't matter how IP differs from owning a house. It doesn't matter if it can be copied (and thank you for having the arrogance to explain that on board full of developers, btw...). None of this matters. What matters is that Blizzard paid for the creation of the code, and they're afforded protections under the law.