🚀 go-pugleaf

dan@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu (Daniel Zabetakis) writes:


>   So my argument in favour of a.b.p.e is basically that the group does not
>harm publishers of pornography. My argument looks at 5 features of the images
>posted, and tries to show how they contrast to cases where the harm is more
>evident.
>   You may not feel that all the argument are relevant. Indeed, many will feel
>that my whole article is irrelevant. But I hope people will see more clearly
>where I stand.

>   To show harmlessness, I hope to show that the images posted to a.b.p.e 
>are not really in competition with the works they originate in. The first
>feature is completeness.
>   How many of you xerox articles from professional journals, and fail to
>send in the $2.00 required? How many of those with thier hands up would
>refrain from copying a whole magazine even if you were motivated to? The 
>concept of fair use allows you to make limited copies of works without
>violating copyright. But I don't think there is a clear dilineation between
>acceptable and otherwise.
>   A.b.p.e doesn't compete with Playboy (for example) because noone ever
>posts the whole magazine. Or even a whole pictorial. What you normally see is
>1-5 good pictures from a particular magazine. The extent of copying these
>images will go through probably excludes them from 'fair use', but where is the
>harm in it? The editors of Playboy would certainly object if you said that 
>those 5 images where the total worth of the 80 page magazine. I can see that
>it would be harmful to post the entire contents of a magazine to the net.
>(that very well might start happening in the not-too-distant future).

Playboy is *actively* going after people distributing those pictures *because*
it harms them. Specificly, because it greatly reduces the market for *their*
electronic image distributions. Yes, they are going into this field. 

The difference between the (minor) harm of not sending in the $2 for that
magazine article, and distributing a Playboy pinup via Usenet is precisely
the difference between making a copy of an extract and distributing free 
copies of said extract. You impair the ability of the copyright holder
to get people to buy extracts from them.

The law is clear, and so is the marketplace. Free copies *do* harm the
copyright owner. And they harm the consumer too. I'm quite sure that
any GIF or JPEG files produced by Playboy or the other publishers will
be superior in quality to many of the badly scanned images we see now.

You are in effect asserting "*I* see no harm in it, therefore there is 
no harm." 
-- 
Leonard Erickson		      leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com
CIS: [70465,203]			 70465.203@compuserve.com
FIDO:   1:105/51	 Leonard.Erickson@f51.n105.z1.fidonet.org
(The CIS & Fido addresses are preferred)