= What do you think of the debate about copyright on the Web?
The baseline is of course "thou shalt not steal, even if it's easy". It's interesting to note that, however complex it is to define legally, most people have very good intuition about what counts as stealing:
- if I copy info from the Web and use it for my own purposes, I'm not stealing, because this is exactly why the information was put on the Web in the first place;
- if I copy info from the Web and re-transmit it to others, giving credit to the author, I am not stealing;
- if I copy info from the Web and re-transmit it to others, pretending I'm the author, I am stealing;
- if I copy info from the Web and sell it to others without permission from the author, I am stealing.
I realize there are lots of borderline cases where it's not immediately clear what counts as stealing, but let's leave that to the lawyers to figure out.
= What practical solutions would you suggest?
I would adopt the following rules of thumb:
- copying info for your own use is always free;