[NTLK] h*cks, kr*ks, SN

[Lord Groundhog]

~~~ On 2010/01/18 02:42, Ryan Vetter at physicalconstants at yahoo.ca wrote ~~~

> 
> You take your mint-condition, black, italian leather couch, that you paid
> $6000 for, load it in a van, and drive 10 blocks in the city.  You back into
> an alley, and unload the couch on the side of the street.  You then drive off.
> The police phone you, because there was a receipt in the couch with your name
> on it.  So they tracked you down.  They leave you a message saying they have
> found your couch, in case it was stolen.  You fail to respond.  They try
> calling you again, but you don't respond.  After some time, the couch is
> placed in an auction and sold off to the highest bidder.  You receive no money
> for the couch.
> 
> Someone ended up profiting from your property, and another person ended up
> owning that property.  But the point is, you abandoned it, even though it was
> your property, it became someone else's because you chose to abandon it.
> 


Forgive me if I'm wrong, but to make this truly analogous, don't you have to
change it to where someone comes into my house and dumps my couch in the
alley?  Because if the software is on *my* web-site, isn't that more like
saying I put the couch in my attic?  And if a copy of it is being used from,
say, the UNNA site, isn't that more like someone coming into my attic and
moving it?  Either way, it has to be "taken" from where I want it and used
in defiance of my intention for it.

OTOH, in pretty much any place I've ever lived, if I had dumped my couch as
you suggest in your analogy, the police would've been on my doorstep to
serve me with a hefty fine for littering, and in my case at least they
would've been confiscating and auctioning my couch because I'd defaulted on
the fine and I let them have the couch rather than serving my 15 days in the
clink.  And my couch would've been sold off right alongside the flashy cars
and yachts of convicted drug dealers and mobsters and like them I'd be
entitled to nothing.


Which leads me to say that even though I'm also guilty of trying to find an
analogy for this, on further reflection it looks more and more like a
mistake to do that.  What we have now is law:  very imperfect perhaps, very
frustrating for certain, but reasonably clear about what it actually says.


 
Shalom. 
Christian 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

³Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from a Newton.²
            -- what Arthur C. Clarke meant

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1ZzpdPJ7Zr4
(With thanks to Chod Lang)
http://tinyurl.com/29y2dl
http://www.diyplanner.com/node/3942

~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Fight Spam.  Join EuroCAUCE: http://www.euro.cauce.org/
Get MUGged and love it: http://www.oxmug.org/
Join today: http://www.newtontalk.net/