[Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

[dsimcha]

== Quote from Steven Schveighoffer (schveiguy at yahoo.com)'s article
> On Fri, 27 Aug 2010 06:48:46 -0400, digited <digited at yandex.ru> wrote:
> > [heavy_ot]
> > Piracy is not stealing - author actually loses nothing from it, and
> > .torrent user
> > is not guaranteed to buy a book if unable to download a .pdf
> > Futhermore, .torrent distribution may be a good advertisement and help
> > to find out
> > if a russian-speaking coder wants to actually order a 1300+ rur book in
> > english or
> > not.
> > [/heavy_ot]
> You have this completely wrong.  Book publishing, like most copyrightable
> material, works on an investment model -- a publisher invests a lot of
> money to get a book written and published, and then recoups that
> investment after selling N copies of the book at a much smaller price.
> What you are saying is that the author doesn't lose anything if someone
> doesn't buy their book.  But when someone uses their creation without
> compensating them for it, then the model breaks down -- who will pay for
> creating books when it is going to be a losing investment?  All you will
> get is books that people are willing to write for free, and those won't be
> very good.  People with excellent talent for writing books won't write
> free books, because they can use their talents elsewhere to make money and
> provide for their family.  The reason we make stealing IP illegal is so
> people will have an incentive to innovate and create IP.  If you want to
> live in a world where all you get is what Richard Stallman gives you, you
> can have it.  I'd rather have people do what they're best at (and Andrei
> is good at writing), and pay for the results than only measure the
> physical cost of an item, ignoring the innovative qualities of it.  How
> many good books do you think would be produced if copyright law didn't
> exist?  Copyright and patent laws exist to *encourage* creation, they
> achieve the result with an indirect requirement, because otherwise it's
> impossible to charge for innovation.

True, except when the whores in Congress retroactively extend copyright terms to
"until Hell freezes over" because the media companies say so, even if the
copyright owner happens to be dead or not contactable, thus discouraging
innovation instead of helping it.

BTW, I feel a little bad making this comment.  What if you were a whore?  Would
you really want to be compared to Congress?