lcrocker(a)nupedia.com wrote:
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.
O.k., well, then in the concept of the wikipedia, this applies because
we can't really give credit and expect it to remain there with any
certainty. Anyone might stumble in and edit the work, changing the meaning,
etc.
I think of ideas like children. We create them,
develop them,
benefit from them; but once they are released into the world, we no
longer have any right to control what becomes of them or who benefits
from them.
O.k., well, I'm thinking we shouldn't argue too much about this here on the
wikipedia list, lest we bore people. :-)
I'll just say that I tend to agree with you _with respect to ideas_, but copyright
is not about _ideas_. You can't copyright an _idea_. So I think that analyzing
the issues has to be a bit more sophisticated than this.
In any event, do you like the change that I made to the notice?
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