4 ms·

Shall we also get off thine lawn? Having big stacks of books in your home is a relatively recent phenomenon. People used to borrow them from the library or ci

Shall we also get off thine lawn? Having big stacks of books in your home is a relatively recent phenomenon. People used to borrow them from the library or circulate them from person to person. Mass availability of inexpensive books has only been with us for 100 years or so. How do you know Jeff Bezos didn't tweak a couple of sentences in your Kindle copy of Catch 22? I don't know, but I do know that detecting such a change will be far, far easier with digital publications than it ever was with paper.

jaysonelliot 12y ago
"Get off my lawn" is an intellectually lazy argument. George Lucas has already famously done repeated "updates" to Star Wars. If it existed only in subscription form, you'd never be able to see the original.
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  > George Lucas has already famously done repeated "updates" to Star Wars. If it existed only in subscription form, you'd never be able to see the original. Or, you might sign up for a service where access to more than one version is a differentiating feature, and get both for the same subscription price rather than having to buy multiple re-releases.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    What makes you think Lucas would grant any service the license to distribute multiple versions?
- dogecoinbase 12y ago
  There's also a subtle point here about accessibility of creative works that I think is often missed -- copyright, as a social contract, exists because society has a reason to provide creators with a period of economic exclusivity in exchange for the release of the work. There's no natural or defensible "right" to prevent people from copying. If a creator chooses to release their work in a format that they can retract (e.g. they can negate the societal benefit of the release), society is under no moral obligation to respect their copyright.
- baddox 12y ago
  You're right about the intellectually lazy argument, but the rest of that comment made what I think is a substantial and valid argument.

jaysonelliot 12y ago

"Get off my lawn" is an intellectually lazy argument. George Lucas has already famously done repeated "updates" to Star Wars. If it existed only in subscription form, you'd never be able to see the original.

ceejayoz 12y ago
> George Lucas has already famously done repeated "updates" to Star Wars. If it existed only in subscription form, you'd never be able to see the original. Or, you might sign up for a service where access to more than one version is a differentiating feature, and get both for the same subscription price rather than having to buy multiple re-releases.
- icebraining 12y ago
  What makes you think Lucas would grant any service the license to distribute multiple versions?
dogecoinbase 12y ago
There's also a subtle point here about accessibility of creative works that I think is often missed -- copyright, as a social contract, exists because society has a reason to provide creators with a period of economic exclusivity in exchange for the release of the work. There's no natural or defensible "right" to prevent people from copying. If a creator chooses to release their work in a format that they can retract (e.g. they can negate the societal benefit of the release), society is under no moral obligation to respect their copyright.
baddox 12y ago
You're right about the intellectually lazy argument, but the rest of that comment made what I think is a substantial and valid argument.