From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Jan 15 2003 - 20:30:11 MST
--- Nathanael Allison <jubungalord@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Actually I find the hording of information by the super powers and
> thier middle and upperclasses a hundred times more selfish than one
> person stealing copies of books. It ensures thier dominance over
> other countries
> and other people. Isn't that the definition of a selfish act, to put
> yourself before others. Of course it's not practical to get everyone
> on the
> same page but it couldn't hurt to make the information accessable in
> some form or another.
Just what sort of 'hoarding' are you speaking of?
Putting yourself before others is simply human nature. If you seek to
put me in chains, I will surely put my interest in living free before
your interest in enslaving me, to the point of violence.
Stealing the hard work of another is slavery, pure and simple. It
doesn't matter if you only want to enslave that person by a small
fraction of their output.
Information is accessible to all. That is what libraries are for. What
you want isn't free access, it is to steal whole books, to HOARD books,
hidden away from the access of others, for your own personal use
without paying for the privilege.
>
> What possible disadvantages could there be by allowing non-fiction
> books to be free on the internet. What, you have to have a commitee
> to determine what is non-fiction. If people want to make money they
> shouldn't be trying to reflect objective Truth in a scientific way
> like you say we are trying to do. Trying to make money will create
> a more non-scientific text because
> people will write to sell, not write the truth.
By what rational logic or other moral/ethical argument can you say that
fiction should be protected but non-fiction should be free?
The non-fictional work of an author is still work, and they deserve to
be paid for their work in proportion to it's popularity.
Science texts have always gotten MORE accurate, and have also always
been far more profitable, and expensive, than fiction or other lighter
reading books. For example, Isaac Asimov earned far more money from his
science books than from his science fiction.
>
> At a certain piont extropians have to worship a religion called
> causation. They have to believe thier is nothing random and
> undeterminable. They must believe that what they think pertains in
> some way to reality. If they do not
> than what's the piont of any of this? Why not worship any religion?
What is reality is that if writers cannot get paid for their work, most
will not write. Most artists will not create, not nearly to the degree
they do, if they cannot earn something for their work. Those that
continue to do so will never reach the same number of consumers without
the legal and justifiable profit-seeking investment of publishers,
galleries, music distributors, etc. Those that ignore this reality are
the same sort of fools that thought that socialism and communism were
valid economic systems.
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