3 ms·

It's somewhat unfortunate that the ruling merely reasons that it wouldn't be practically possible, rather than reasoning that such a copyright would be a burden

• tantalor 8y ago
  Isn't that a stronger argument? The reason you aren't allowed to hunt unicorns is that they don't exist, not that they are sentient creatures.
  • contravariant 8y ago
    Not being able to enforce a law is a pretty weak argument. Hunting unicorns isn't the best comparison as that one would be fairly easy to enforce. If you're more concerned with the unenforceability than the consequences of enforcing a law then something has gone wrong. Going back to your example, a law against hunting sentient creatures would make sense regardless of the fact that establishing sentience is a hard philosophical problem.
    • euyyn 8y ago
      Not being able to enforce a specific aspect of copyright law led in the 80's to pretty much all countries having to reform their laws. When home VCRs became commonplace, creating an automatic copy of a broadcast was still illegal. Some German high court ruled that people's right to privacy in their own homes trumped law enforcement's interest in enforcing copyright, so the law was unenforceable in those cases. Hence was born the exemption for "copies for private use", and the related "tax" applied to sales of VCRs (and later on, blank CDs and DVDs) that was used to pay off author associations.