[Upd-discuss] French Judge refuses to shut down internet connections of P2P users

[Michael Hart]

Authorization Versus Stonewalling

Actually, if you walk the halls of bureaucracy long enough,
you will realize to an incredible extent, the huge difference
between those who can only say "NO" and those who can say "YES."

I have made it a policy never to explain my situation to those
who can only say "NO," because, at best, they can only send me
on to others who might be able to say "YES," but more often
than not, it's up a ladder of "NAY" sayers that eventually MAY
get me to someone who can say yes.

I have written an example in my memoirs concerning when I failed
some test in a medical exam and was told to come back in a week
and take it again.  I asked why, and they refused to say, so I
went up the ladder, level by level, until, literally, I was talking
to the Chief of Staff of a very important hospital.

Once I explained the situation to him, he wrote a scathing reply
that I was told to take back down the ladder, level by level, so
all concerned should know that the next time such questions should
be answered promptly. . .and the person who started the whole thing
had to tell me that I hadn't been eating enough when travelling
across the country, and that a week of normal eating would most
likely correct the situation.

Michael S. Hart
Project Gutenberg

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005, Richard Stallman wrote:

>    > I suppose the question is this, if you can authorize something do you
>    > have the right to do the thing you are authorizing or merely to prevent
>    > others from doing it?
>
>    Authorizing implies authority. Prohibiting too.
>
> Authorizing implies authority, which implies the power to impede some
> kinds of use; but it doesn't necessary imply complete authority to
> prohibit any and all kinds of use.  So there is a difference in shade
> of meaning, and it can translate into a difference in the amount of
> power.
>
>    My comprehension of copyright is based on ownership, which is not negative
>    but simply nihillistic: since its basic rule is that nothing can be known
>    by others, copyright was invented so that knowledge can be owned, to make a
>    profit out of sharable intellectual resources.
>
> I think your idea of copyright has been influenced to a large degree
> by the recently-popularized term "intellectual property".  This term
> suggests an absolutist and impractical approach to copyright, which
> was foreign to previous thinking about copyright in the US.  So you
> might want to excise term and its presuppositions from your thinking.
>
> See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml.
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