unethics

[Greg Johnson]

Mike,

Your analysis is mostly correct, but overly complex.  Very simply, 
copyright is exactly what it says: the original author or owner of the 
copyright holds the copy rights.  That includes the right to make as 
many copies, or as few copies as he or she chooses, or to sell or not 
sell copys.  Very simply, when some one else makes a copy, without the 
owner's permission, copyright infringement has occurred.  Damages are 
another subject, but if the FA sells for $500 (I don't know) then the 
damages are $500.  It's not a defense to copyright infringement that "X 
wouldn't provide a copy, so I copied it."

As to the rest, it was, shall we say "funny" to "hear" a co-infringer 
describe the person he had paid to infringe another's copyright, as 
unethical.  I thought to myself: "Officer, I paid this guy to steal a 
car; he didn't deliver, so I want him arrested"   When a person's 
copyrighted work is copied without their permission, their intellectual 
property has been stolen, plain and simple. 

Back to our regularly scheduled programming . . . .

Greg J
BIRA.ORG

>Mike Arman <armanmik at earthlink.net> wrote in part:
>
>>>"Unethical" also applies to anyone who purchases or receives copyrighted material without permission of the copyright owner.
>>With that in mind, there are a lot of unethical members on this discussion group.
>>    
>>
>Nah, not us . . .
>
>As a book publisher, copyright gives me the legal basis for stopping anyone from copying "my" work (copyright=ownership).
>
>There are two parts to this - first is simply stopping them, second is collecting damages, which are generally regarded as lost sales. <snip>
>