> Content creators should have a right to decide how their content is disseminated - whether it's sold, shared for free, given free for noncommercial use, kept private, etc.
Once content is "out there", they have no such control, because people have the ability to disseminate the content without the creator's consent.
The only way for people not to have this ability would be to abolish the internet, ban general-purpose computers and replace them with locked-down equivalents; something like the iPad and Facebook, and make it illegal for anyone to produce freer equivalents.
Is that what you want? I suspect not. But that's the choice in front of us. It's not about whether people can get unauthorised access to content without paying for it, it's whether computers and electronic networks are to be a tool for freedom or a fascist jackboot stamping on all of us.
Once content is "out there", they have no such control, because people have the ability to disseminate the content without the creator's consent.
The only way for people not to have this ability would be to abolish the internet, ban general-purpose computers and replace them with locked-down equivalents; something like the iPad and Facebook, and make it illegal for anyone to produce freer equivalents.
Is that what you want? I suspect not. But that's the choice in front of us. It's not about whether people can get unauthorised access to content without paying for it, it's whether computers and electronic networks are to be a tool for freedom or a fascist jackboot stamping on all of us.