[OT] - does IP exist?

[Manfred_Nowak]

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
  


-- 
Maybe some knowledge of some types of disagreeing and their relation 
can turn out to be useful:
http://blog.createdebate.com/2008/04/07/writing-strong-arguments/