Copywrong

[Doug Alan <nessus@athena.mit.edu>]

> From: tim@toad.com (Tim Maroney)

> Don't be an idiot.  Parody is a protected activity under the first
> amendment and has been since day 1.  But then, you've already shown
> more than once that you can't even recognize parody, much less
> understand it.

When have I shown that, Tim?  I, at least, know the meaning of the
word "parody".  Your message wasn't "parody" -- it was "satire".  And
I must appreciate satire to some degree since I like *Spy* magazine.
Maybe you just weren't doing a good job of satire.  Besides, I
understood your posting perfectly -- I just didn't think it was
apropriate.  It wasn't outrageous enough to be unbelievable.  For
someone else, other than IED, it could very well have been a true
statement.

>> What IED was considering may or may not be wrong, but it is
>> *different* in many ways, and you do not do intelligent discussion
>> any service by refusing to acknowledge the difference.

> Yes, of course it's wrong.  I think under any reasonable system of
> ethics, it's far worse to knowingly invade someone's privacy and
> disseminate private materials which they do not want distributed, than
> it is to deprive an already wealthy individual of a few dollars of
> profits.  That is, the crime Andrew Marvick actually committed is worse
> than the crime I alluded to in my satirical posting.  They're both
> wrong, but the invasion of privacy is far more serious than the theft
> of a few bucks from a multimillionaire.

First of all, these bootleg recordings that have appeared were not
"private".  They were sent out by Kate to record companies in the
hopes of obtaining a record contract.  Presumably, if the record
company wants to, it could play them for anyone it likes.  This, I
suppose, is a bit different from a public distribution, but I'd hardly
compare it to publishing someone's diary, or what have you.

Furthermore, you seem to have forgotten that it was I who originally
pointed out that the moral quandry was not over a few dollars but over
whether Kate would be hurt by distributing the material.

Your claim about "reasonable systems of ethics" is pretty lame.  I
guess you've never heard of Utilitarianism.  John Stuart Mills may not
have been right abut everything, but he was a smarter cookie than you
or me.  I think most philosophers would agree that Utilitarianism is
at least "reasonable".

In fact, something of the sort that IED was considering has already
been done legally.  There's a biography of Kate Bush that contains
poetry that appeared in a school publication when Kate was in
elementary school.  I'm sure Kate was none too pleased to see her
youthful mistakes exposed for the whole world to see.  However, it was
completely legal.  Was it morally wrong for the biography author to
reprint these poems?

I have to agree with you about the merits of Giger, however.

Honkey with an attitude,

|>oug