The concept "steal" is quite broad -- broader than theft of
property.
Yes, the word is ambiguous; that does not mean the various concepts covered by the word have to be, but I agree that it does allow you to use the word without implying one specific meaning of it.
Similarly, plagiarism is a moral issue quite separate from the legal status of things. Even someone opposed to copyright laws can agree that it is immoral to use an author's work without permission,...
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.
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.
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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
lcrocker@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?
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org