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Comment by Zetice | Hacker News Reader

Why are we talking about legality? Do you believe that ownership is categorically a legal concept?

And wouldn't it be censorship to prevent me from publishing a clean version of Huck Finn? If his uncensored story exists, and my publishing of an alternative version in no way removes those works from circulation, there's not really an argument in place that I'm censoring anything.

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The author is dead, any "ownership" of the work today is purely a legal concept.

But ownership in any sense irrelevant. Being the owner of a work does not preclude censorship. If the author himself censors his work, as Roald Dahl did do, that is still censorship.

So let me get this straight; the concept of transferral of ownership is, according to you, purely a legal concept. Absent laws, it would be perfectly acceptable for me to take your things if someone else made them for you? And it would be morally wrong to make changes to something once I own it, if I wasn't the originator of the thing?

> Absent laws, it would be perfectly acceptable for me to take your things if someone else made them for you?

Regarding intellectual property? Yes, that would be perfectly fine. That's an entirely law based creation, not a moral one.

> And it would be morally wrong to make changes to something once I own it, if I wasn't the originator of the thing?

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors%27_rights

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