🚀 go-pugleaf

munnari!mqccsunc.mqcc.mq.oz.au!ifarqhar@uunet.UU.NET (Ian Farquhar) writes:
>...As for the concept of the user having legal control over what was
>deleted from his/her hard disk, I cannot see this as a problem.
>Multi-user systems have traditionally provided mechanisms for the
>superuser to control the user's files with far more privileges
>than the users themselves....

So intellectual property may be destroyed by anyone at any time and
the owner has no recourse whatsoever?  If current laws say this, then
it is another failure by those who created our laws to provide adequate
protection of intellectual property.  The parallel with multi-user
systems is flawed, in that in a multi-user system a user *knowingly*
grants the superuser certain privileges in exchange for the system
being efficiently organized, and *with the understanding that the
superuser will *not* abuse those privileges*!

   What the AIDS program did was most likely illegal, but what's even
more important, it was entirely unethical.  As to the response here,
all I've seen are warnings not to run the program (in light of what it
does), and perhaps there was some advice on how to recover files that
the program took hostage.  Telling people how to recover their legal
property is hardly wrong.  What I haven't seen are instructions on how
to run the AIDS program despite its "copy protection", which would
violate the rights of the author.

   Creating disassembled listings of the program would, unfortunately,
violate the author's right to create derivative works, but I see this
as a necessary evil in the highly ethical process of attempting to
restore the legal property of victims of this program.

Ian also writes:
>...If I were the defense lawyer with access to this newsgroup, the
>first thing that I would have done is to take all of the relevant
>articles that have appeared, and present them as evidence
>prejudicial to the fair conduct of the trial....

Fine, but you'd have to show that the jury members had read the articles.

Ian also writes:
>...There also is a strong reluctance to change an opinion in the light
>of new evidence, which is very worrying indeed....

Just remember, Ian, you said it!
___________________________________________________________________________
David R. Conrad              BITNET: dconrad%wayne-mts@um.cc.umich.edu
"Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life."