On Tue, Mar 11, 2003 at 04:04:12PM +1300, Nick Phillips wrote: > On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 05:01:58PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > > I do. And so apparently does the RIAA, who feel it's an infringement of > > copyright for people to put their own ripped audio onto sharable volumes > > at work, at least once someone who doesn't own an officially sanctioned > > copy accesses it for the first time. > > In this case, it's the individual who is doing it on their own behalf, rather > than as part of the corporate entity, hence they are distributing. If the > company required them as part of their job to rip audio and put it onto > internally shared volumes for internal company use, I don't believe that > would be distrinbution. I do not think this is a very widely-held understanding of the term "distribution". > > Likewise, the police can bust you > > for "possession with intent to distribute" for carrying certain > > quantities of marijuana, and I don't think the law's assumption is that > > you necessarily intend to be distributing to general public, or on the > > open market -- it is enough that you might distribute the stuff > > privately to your friends. > > I don't see how you mean to apply this to the situation we're trying to > discuss; please elucidate. You're going to have to tell me what part of it you don't understand. I'm saying that at least in some legal contexts, "distribution" is not limited to corporate activity, nor to public exchanges of goods. > > I'm not even it's a bad definition, even if sometimes gets applied to > > evil ends. > > > > Nick's words my words > > ---------------------------------------------------- > > deployment private distribution > > distribution public distribution > > > > I think my terms afford less ambiguity. What would you call the class > > of activities that encompasses both "deployment" *and* "distribution"? > > I think you're treading dangerous ground using the word distribution in > a context in which the "distribution" -related elements of copyright law, > licenses etc. do not/should not apply. They certainly *do* apply. The only reason the RIAA didn't bust people for making mix tapes for their friends in the 80s was that it was way too hard to enforce their will. But they very much did want to stamp that out. Why do you think audio DAT never took off as a consumer format? SCMS. Whether they *should* is a different matter. But rather than sophistically redefine "distribution" to exclude actions that *shouldn't* be restricted by Fair Use, I'd rather defend those Fair Use rights. Otherwise the copyright cartels will render our definitions irrelevant anyway, through steady encroachment in the courts and via national legislatures. > Does there need to be a word that describes both? Why not? > Does there need to be a word > that describes the class of activities that encompasses both "lobster fishing" > and "travelling to the moon" -- they're different, why should there be one > word for them? This analogy is absurdly exaggerated. Both "deployment" and "distribution", to use what I think your terms are, involve the transfer of materials (albeit possibly intangible ones) from one party to another -- even if the "parties" are individuals working for the same company. -- G. Branden Robinson | Human beings rarely imagine a god Debian GNU/Linux | that behaves any better than a branden@debian.org | spoiled child. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Robert Heinlein
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