Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6089054" data-attributes="member: 27160">I agree with this, but with the "electronic age" there has been a hugely significant shift, because intellectual property is now being routinely disseminated via a system that theoretically gives the purchaser nothing but a license to use the copy they have temporarily, whereas it has hitherto been necessary to sell a physical, tradable copy.I say "theoretically", here, because in actual fact the user does have a physical copy, albeit on a transient medium, in a form that is trivially and cheaply duplicated. This seems to me like a situation that is set up to create conflicting interests, with a theoretically dominant position for one side that is practically actually incredibly weak, even with the support of the law. That is a disaster waiting to happen - and in some nooks and corners it already is! Basically, a new business model - which will likely require some modification of the law to enable it - is urgently required if we are not to have a situation where IP holders are theoretically all-powerful with their own IP, but practically powerless to stop unauthorised use. This will come about because egregious bullying over IP, such as in the "Space Marines" story, will influence the general public gradually to tolerate "pirates" and other forms of "unlicensed IP use". Basically, the rulebook badly needs to be rewritten so that the rights (and wrongs) of all parties are clarified and we have a standard of conduct that is not set up to defeat itself.</blockquote>

Verification