Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Music downloading

I'm getting increasingly irritated by the use of the words "theft" and "piracy" with respect to music (and such) downloading from the web.

While I'm no IP radical by any means, downloading music is not stealing in any real way. Copyright (in the US anyway) is a limited term legal gift of a monopoly to content creators from the people of the country. I'll grant you that downloaders are taking back their gift early and without the full blessing of the law - but its not theft (or piracy).

If anything is stealing (or piracy) it is corporations like Disney getting copyright indefinitely extended. And in terms of the value that the corporations stole from us all with the copyright extension act, I'd say they are by far the bigger thieves.

And I don't even download music.

Sunday, May 16, 2004

Just a first post

Trying a first post.

Or, as the tradition goes....

Hello world!