Re: On considering digital copies as physical things...

Mhyst [2013-08-21T15:05]:
> I mean...
> when you own a book you can read and lend it to a friend. The "free"
> market is been trying to give magic things (like digital copies) some
> characteristics of physical things while denying others. 

Be careful, it works both ways :)

* When you lend your physical book, you do not keep your physical copy. The other person has it. So if you want to reproduce what the physical world do. Someone from the industry could argue that you should remove it from your hard drive until the person gives it back to you. :)

* Lending to another person is also a matter of regulations with specificities depending on countries. Some countries will forbid lending outside your family circle (not really enforceable but still…). Someone from the industry could argue, that by allowing DRM you could be more in line with what legal systems prescribe. 

Physical and digital worlds have their own properties. Things will change. The matter of exchanging content in the bigger scheme of our cultural world should be driven by improving the situation for everyone with a priority of constituencies. DRM as used in the world now have a tendency to damage some of the rights of these constituencies.


-- 
Karl Dubost
http://www.la-grange.net/karl/