[OT] - does IP exist?

[Jesse Phillips]

On Sun, 17 Aug 2008 16:07:12 +0000, Manfred_Nowak wrote:

> Lars Ivar Igesund wrote:
> 
>> "I assert that the intention of keeping a private letter away from
>> other's eyes is no different than the intention of keeping the work
>> private unless someone pay for the right to read/view it. A right to
>> copy it, or sell on to others, would be an additional widening of the
>> authors intention, and still the readers obligation to honor."
> 
> Now, that you have made your statement a bit more complex, you
> introduced new terms  like "author", "copy", "read/view". This terms
> have a fuzzy definition only and I doubt that anyone is able to define
> them in advance and sufficient detail.
> 
> For example the wording does not exclude the case where someone payed
> for the right to "read/view" a work, encrypts it and then publishes the
> encrypted work. This would not violate the right he has payed for,
> because no one can "read/view" the original work. In addition the
> encrypted work might hold marks of his own "author"-ship, because he
> himself wrote the encrypting program.
> 
> Then someone other finds "by accident" the key to the encrypted work,
> "copies" the encrypted work, decrypts it; then spends no look at the
> decrypted work, but feeds it into the appropriate compiler; then enjoys
> the resulting functionality.
> 
> Is this finder of the key allowed
> 1) to publish/sell his findings, because he is the "author" of the
> resulting code/algorithm, which transforms a publicly available peace of
> (des)information into some functionality? 2) to enjoy the functionality?
> 
> -manfred

I'm a little lost, are we a legal comity trying to right the copyright 
law so that it can not be misinterpreted? Because I thought it was just 
to get an understanding of each others views, and it seems to me that you 
understand Lars's position on this and thus should not need explicit 
clarification. I myself have requested clarification for the use of the 
word information, but this is because me and Yigal do not seem to have 
the same understanding as to what it refers in the context used.