Re:Explain Me This: (Score 1)

Alright, I conceed to your idea of the "replicator" example I made. My thing is, though - copyright law really wasn't made to protect the user, even thought it might at first. Using the Constitution, the whole point of copyrights and patents are to provide the incentive for smart people to develop these technologies. As much as I personally support Open Source technology and the freedom of information, most people don't. Living in a capitolist society will provent people from making decisions based on the greater good - in fact, it's quite against it. If these people that have these ideas think that they'll just get raped after they put thousands of manhours of work into it, they are not going to even try. (Again, this is the typical person, not someone who's using the Greater Good mentality.) Now, if you provide this economic incentive, these people will have a reason to inovate and make things better, in hopes of getting rich. The public suffers when this is taken away. When the artist's patent or copyright runs out, the public is the benefactor, in that these works are now usable fore everyone - free, and legally protected free. While a work created now might not go public domain in our lifetime, it will eventually work towards the greater good by letting our prodginy use it in the future. Without this, we jump the gun and get some things up front, but it's lesser and perhaps lower in quality due to the research and development happening in someone's spare time. Not always bad, but most of the main technological things we take for granted wouldn't be around without copyrights or patents. While I can see how the technical term of stealing isn't applicable, you still have to see how you might be "robbing" society of these things by being greedy ourselves. Plaidy