Technology

I only took issue with your regressive philosophy

The "regressive philosophy" you're accusing me of holding is the opposite of what I said. There's your misunderstanding to be corrected.

I don't like the publishers, I think copyright has gone bananas with its various extensions over the years, I want to see them fought and defeated in court. The problem here is who is doing the fighting.

Imagine a scenario where there's a ravenous man-eating bear in the woods. There's two people available to fight it; a grizzled woodsman who makes it his entire business to go out and fight bears, and the village librarian who's carrying around a backpack full of irreplaceable books. For some reason the librarian is out there poking the bear with a stick, and when the bear didn't initially respond he started whacking it over the nose. Now the bear is chewing on the librarian's leg and the librarian is crying out "oh no, my backback full of books is in danger!"

Well duh. You shouldn't have been carrying that backpack into harm's way like that. Nobody is in the least bit surprised that the bear attacked the librarian under those circumstances. I don't have to be on the bear's side to understand how this situation was going to go down and call the librarian an idiot for willingly getting into it.

The woodsman (the EFF) should have been the ones to take this fight. They're better at it, it's their job, and if they fail they don't risk that precious backpack in the process. The librarian should have kept his books safely ensconced until the fight was over and it was safe for him to bring them out. If he really wanted those books distributed in the meantime, there are some sites who are already out there running around under the bear's nose taking that risk for their own reasons; let them continue taking those risks for now. The IA's job is to protect the archive.