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Beware the Jolly Roger Label
Authored by: el bid on Apr 10, '02 10:00:41AM
Editor's note: ... I do not condone nor support software piracy

I think we really all need to wake up and realise that this word "piracy" has been foisted on us by a pressure group that wants to force our thinking about the use of digital information in a particular direction.

Whether you incline in that direction yourself is beside the point. Loaded words with a hidden agenda in no way aid the debate -- probably one of the most important debates in the IT sector at present -- about the future of copyright and other so-called "intellectual property rights".

As ever, Richard Stallman is lucid and thought provoking on this point (at http://www.gnu.org passim, but see particularly ../philosophy/words-to-avoid.html).

We don't have to agree with him on every (or indeed any) point (at least not unless you happen to be sitting across the lunch table from him, as I was a couple of weeks ago, when disagreement is not an option!). But I do think the world is better off for having him around, and there's not much point having him around unless we try to understand what he's telling us.

--
el bid



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