[Wikipedia-l] Response

[Larry Sanger]

> Plagiarism is copying another authors work _and claiming it as your
> own_, which is fraudulent, and I agree immoral.  Using an author's
> work without his permission for your own use or profit, but openly
> without deception, is copyright infringement, with which I find not
> the slightest moral objection.  This is our moral disagreement.

While we are registering disagreements, let me (publicly this time
rather than privately) register *my* disagreement.  I think it's pretty
obvious that intellectual property rights should be strongly protected.
What *is* interesting is *why* intellectual property is important to
protect.  There are excellent reasons why intellectual property rights
exist and have existed in one form or another in so many places and for
so long; probably the most important is that, without them, artists and
inventors lose an extremely important incentive to carry on their work.
Of course, if one were a luddite, for example, one might want to oppose
intellectual property protections, because getting rid of them would
almost certainly have a very chilling effect on the development of
technology.

Therefore, you may fail miserably in your proselytizing, Lee.  :-)

(Perhaps we can continue this conversation on
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/CopyrightTalk ...)

--Larry