Tendo City

http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2008/06/ap-se...se-fo.html

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/17/...719/537292

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/16/...173/536821

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/16/busine.../16ap.html

Mind-numbingly stupid, Associated Press, mind-numbingly stupid.

I mean, how dumb do they think people are? Do they they think a few illegal threats will get bloggers and websites to stop following the law or something and instead obey their ridiculous restrictions? It's really bizarre...

Wow that is dumb...

This just goes to show that the sort of absolute property that libertarians discuss is not just sometimes not really allowed by physics (the universe is under no obligation to be cooperative with our understanding of property, consider owning a block of "sky" or a section of "river") but often is far fuzzier than libertarians seem to think it is.

Copyright shows this point more clearly than anything though. It's very fuzzy. It's hard to draw a line in the sand and declare any sort of absolute line. What of news? Do people not have a right to know, as they say? Does someone's own copy of information they have in their head suddenly become the property of someone else just to protect that person's rights? At the same time, people do have a right to profit from their own work. In other words, there is a conflict of interest between two rational beings (something a libertarian might say is impossible, as they never bothered to question their ideals), and compromise has to be reached. In this case, the compromise is incredibly complicated in and of itself, and it's still not entirely clear. Two judges could rule a particular quotation as violating or not violating, depending on point of view. In general, the idea is that quoting the specific text you need to back up your statement is considered okay, but quoting all or a significant chunk of it, especially stuff not relating to your point, is a violation.

At any rate, I don't think owners of web sites should be held accountable for the illegal actions of posters ON said web sites, even if it does make it a lot harder for people to defend their copyrights, and I certainly don't think copyright should be so strong that information can't be transferred at all, as that creates a terrible civilization for everyone.