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Comment by KGIII | Hacker News Reader

I support IP rights, as a general rule. However, they sure get abused. I'm kind of annoyed about this, even though I have nothing to do with it.

If you break my system, thanks for letting us know. It'd be great if we could pay you to help fix our system and make it more difficult to break in the future.

I'd not take them to court. I'd try to hire them. Hell, I'd give them reward money - even if they didn't want to be hired.

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Intellectual property is theft.

Sure, inasmuch as taking labor without payment is slavery.

Would you think so if you poured your soul into writing a book, only to have it copied and distributed without your permission, for someone else's profit?

It's not exactly like that doesn't happen under our current system.

So everyone working on books, movies and computer games is a theft apparently.

Not everyone wants to give their work for free, dress in coloured cothles, sing about peace and love and grow tomatos in a community.

No. Intellectual property is a legal concept supported by a framework of laws and regulations. In itself it doesn't constitute theft. Exactly how the laws are used or abused matters. Intention is everything. From one end of the spectrum of having all your productions distributed everywhere rendering you unable to sell it even for a pittance to coming down massively with locked down systems and lawyers and costly lawsuits to intimidate and harass people into buying your product over and above its subjective value... we need a balance like everywhere else. Absolute statements rarely cut it.

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