[Dylan16807]

That degrades property rights, so it's bad for the many.

Unless you systematically take most of the money away from billionaires, which could be totally justified if society wanted to enact such a tax.

In the case of 20 year old source code, there's not really an important norm to uphold.

[braveo]

Wait, so let me get this straight.

Your reasoning for that is "it degrades property rights", but you're for publicly releasing Blizzards property for "the good of the many"?

You want the source to be available and you're trying to back into it with some sort of moralistic argument instead of just admitting that you want the work to be available but have no real basis for it outside of personal preference.

Because that's what happens when you try and make a rational argument for why you just want something. You get ridiculous arguments like "it's not ok in this case because property rights, but it's ok in this other case despite property rights".

[tripzilch]

> Your reasoning for that is "it degrades property rights", but you're for publicly releasing Blizzards property for "the good of the many"?

just the information on the cd, obviously.

degradation of property rights has nothing to do with copyrights.

and suddenly it's very clear, if the round bit of plastic was very valuable (maybe it's gold, maybe it's the only copy), then yeah obviously you're doing right if you give it back.

after you made a copy.

[Dylan16807]

If you look at the other posts I made, it should be more clear.

There are different kinds of property rights.

The property rights for the money you have in your bank account are important. (But if we wanted to add a rule-based tax across everyone that would be okay.)

The intellectual property rights for recently-made things are important.

The intellectual property rights for 20 year old code are not at all important. It's okay if we file off that specific corner of the law.

[tripzilch]

"intellectual property rights" aren't even "property rights", they just confusingly use the same terms.

we had to invent copyright to mean anything at all, it didn't exist before. but even animals have some basic concepts about actual property rights (they can get righteously angry about it, for instance).

it's the word "property" in "intellectual property" that is misleading (deliberately, like the word "patriot" in "patriot act"). it's just a legal term, it didn't (quite) magically turn information into physical property when we came up with it (just one or two centuries ago).

[braveo]

and the property rights to my house are unimportant because the house is 20+ years old.

oh wait.... something is wrong with that thought process, but I'll let you split another hair in your attempt at a meaningful dichotomy.

[Dylan16807]

You don't see any difference between physical property and source code?

I can't wait until you find out that sufficiently old intellectual property goes public, while sufficiently old houses don't go public! Have fun blaming that on me splitting hairs when it wasn't my idea.

More seriously, intellectual property is a number of different things lumped together, and they serve different purposes. Copyright exists to encourage new works, and while you can make arguments that there are some benefits from copyright being long-lasting on the creation of works like books and pictures, it's basically impossible to make a similar argument for code.

[braveo]

So the splitting of the hairs you're attempting is to point out that IP typically expires at some point, and therefore we should all consider anything "old" as effectively having expired IP, regardless of whether that's true or not.

Blizzard's IP hasn't expired, your argument here holds no water.

[wtetzner]

IP is different that physical property. If someone takes something physical from anther person, the original owner loses that object. But if someone "takes" (copies) source code from someone, the original owner still has it. Now two people have it instead of one.

By the way, I'm not making any arguments about morality. I'm just pointing out that IP is different from physical property in important ways.

[jhasse]

If I steal your house, that means that you lost it. The same isn't true for the code, as Blizzard would still also have it (along with the right to distribute binary copies of it, which is a million times more valuable).

[jhasse]

What would be the damages for Blizzard if he had released the code?

[tripzilch]

are you conflating ethics and law again, or do you honestly believe that a corporation, a legal construct, has moral rights like a human??

because I can make up constructs all day that suffered more damages either way.

[braveo]

this distinction does not matter, if you steal my code and release it I can sue for damages exactly the way I would if you were to somehow steal my house.