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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 4917709" data-attributes="member: 15538">How much does it cost you to read Shakespeare's Hamlet? (rhetorical pause) That's right, approximately nothing, apart from time, enegy, and a few bytes of bandwidth. Now suppose tomorrow, Walt Disney Inc. was granted a copyright on Hamlet. Suddenly, they want $25 every time someone publishes or distributes a copy. Does this scenario sound strange?Well, if you look at the facts, there is no difference between that and current copyright law, say, for the PHBII. A work exists, someone has been granted the copyright, and you have to pay. "But wait," you say. "It is different." And you are correct. The PHBII's copyright belongs to WotC by what most people consider a reasonable set of rules that provide benefits to our society by entitling them to a royalty. Nonetheless, infringing is not theft... it is infringing, just as posting Hamlet on Gutenberg would be infringement in the imaginary and unlikely circumstances I put forth above. Let's say you have a copyright that lasts for 75 years. Distributing it 74 years, 364 days into its existence, that's infringment. Distributing it 75 years and one day is not. Did it suddenly become moral and ethical to distribute it after 75 years, whereas it was immoral and evil the day before? Now, what if I told you that the original copyright was assigned to Company X under duress? What if I further told you that the copyrighted work was a book on psychology and philosophy that would help thousands of people, and its publisher and copyright were purchased solely so that Company X could mothball it in favor of their own, slightly better selling but inferior, book?There are many different ways of solving ethical problems, but very few of them are going to come up with solutions that apply to most, much less every situation.A Utilitarian might ask - "Will more good or harm come of distributing this work?"A rules utilitarian might ask - "What is the value of the copyright law, and what are the consequences to the rule of law in general if I choose to ignore the copyright law because I find that law objectionable?"A virtue ethicist might ask - "What kind of person would I become if I distributed this PDF?"A Kantian ethicist might ask - "Should I wish for everyone to distribute this PDF in such a situation? Should WotC wish that everyone would pull legal distribution of all PDFs? If the answers are no and no, how should everyone agree to resolve such dilemmas?"This is a very different question than, "Did Person B dstribute work H in such a fashion that it appears to go against Law Y?"And right in the middle is the question, "What is just? What is the basis of this law? Is this law supportable under our view of citizenship, enterepeneurship, and artistry? How do we know if a given law should be considered invalid?"</blockquote>

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