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This is like saying that [...] the paper manufacturer steals the paper back No, it's really nothing like that. Semantics aside, intellectual property is not li
by andreyf 17y ago
This is like saying that [...] the paper manufacturer steals the paper back
No, it's really nothing like that. Semantics aside, intellectual property is not like physical property: it's not subject to the laws physical property is subject to, nor to the right of physical property.
- naz 17y agoIt was Amazon who made it like physical property by applying all the DRM in the first place.
- jacquesm 17y agoDRM and physical properties are not applicable to the same objects. DRM refers to data+software to unlock that data. A physical device could be the carrier of a DRM'd piece of data but it has nothing to do with the carrier itself. Data is just streams of bits no matter what carrier they're on. That data could be encumbered with DRM or it could be 'plain'. You never 'own' a piece of DRM'd data, these are almost exclusively limited use sublicenses. It's not like buying a book or a record (the vinyl kind). It's more like buying a movie ticket.
- ekiru 17y agoYou're absolutely right. A better comparison would be if you bought a computer from Apple and were using iWork to write some notes, and then Apple decided to delete the notes you had been writing without your permission and without warning. Regardless of the legality of deleting the 1984 ebook, it's ridiculous to assert that Amazon should be able to destroy anyone's annotations for any reason. Those annotations belong to the user who created them. I don't really understand what you mean when you say "semantics aside". Are you intentionally saying something that is equivalent to "Ignoring the meaning of 'intellectual property' and 'physical property', intellectual property is not like physical property?" I assume not, but I'm not sure what you meant to say there.
- andreyf 17y agoA better comparison would be if you bought a computer from Apple and were using iWork to write some notes, and then Apple decided to delete the notes you had been writing without your permission and without warning. Agreed, this is a much better comparison! :) I don't really understand what you mean when you say "semantics aside" By "semantics", I was referring to the word "property". I mean that if I sell you a loaf of bread, it's a transaction governed by a nearly disjoint set of laws than if I sell you a poem or program that I wrote. For example, I can't sell you a loaf of bread and force you to eat it on a Monday, but I can sell you a DRM-ed program that only runs on Mondays (enforced by people with heavy sticks and shiny guns ;)). If our goal is creating a productivity-maximizing society, I think enforcing some restrictions of copyright are a good idea, as long as they "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" [1], but current copyright law seems as if it might over-reach that. What I would love to see is a real debate about where the line should be drawn. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause
- jamesbritt 17y ago"Regardless of the legality of deleting the 1984 ebook, it's ridiculous to assert that Amazon should be able to destroy anyone's annotations for any reason. Those annotations belong to the user who created them." The annotations were not destroyed. The work they referenced was removed. The claim is that, absent that work (with its particular page numbers , etc. I'm guessing) those notes are essentially useless, since they now refer to a void.