No, fraud is when someone promises someone something, gets paid for it, and then does not provide the product or service, in other words, breaking an implied contract. Since there is no implied contract, there would be no fraud.
The question is whether or not the monopoly is because of trade secrets or because of patents/copyrights. If it is because of trade secrets, then that is their right, since all parties involved agreed to it of their own free will. If not, then it is simply a government granted monopoly, which would not exist in a free market.
Well, I think implied in this case and similar cases would be that if your name is on the book as the author then what the customer thinks he is buying is a book written by you. If it is in fact a novel written by John Scalzi, then you have indeed defrauded your customer. Likewise if you write your own novel, or you have a client who wrote a novel, and you put John Scalzi’s name on the book as the author to sell more copies because he is a fairly well-known science fiction writer. I think these cases clearly involve fraud.
At what point does the written word become “fraud” in your scenario? One letter? One word? A sentence? A paragraph? Ten pages? At what arbitrary line does it become “fraud” to copy what someone else wrote? How do you know that the person who wrote something first was the first one to actually come up with an idea? Maybe they “stole” it from someone they know and just happened to be the first to write it down.
And what if someone changed around the story a little bit. Are they still copying? If so, how much of the story would they have to change for it to not be a copy?
Regardless, the way it would work in a free society, would be that if you wrote something, you would be able to print it first, so people would know who wrote it first and who copied. The copier would not last long.
Also, look at wikipedia.org. It is copyright free, and one of the best resources for information.
Fraud has to do with lying to someone that you are going to provide them a product, they pay for it, and then do not get what they paid for. If you lie about whether or not you wrote a book, and sell it, they still got what they expected.
You’re rather changing the subject here. My hypothetical scenarios involved selling a novel written by you or your client as if it were written by John Scalzi, or selling a novel with the claim that it was written by you when in fact it was written by John Scalzi.
We’re talking about more than just an idea here. We’re talking about a particular concrete pattern of words laid out to tell a specific story. Now, obviously I’m not talking about having intellectual property in ideas or even in particular concrete patterns of words or computer code, etc. Obviously, it is not simply in copying that the fraud consists. It is not the copying as such that constitutes fraud. The fraud does not consist simply in making copies of someone’s novel and selling the copies. You’re reacting as if I’m trying to slip IP in the back door. I’m not. Read more carefully.
So? This is completely irrelevant.
You keep asserting this without taking note of the fact that I show wherein lies the implied or explicit contract.
I note that you had a similar problem earlier in understanding expectations with regard to sex with Pamela Anderson. When fans of John Scalzi buy a book by John Scalzi, what they expect is a book actually written by John Scalzi. If in fact it is a book written by a client of yours, or you yourself, then you are in fact not selling them what they expected and what you led them to believe they were getting. You have in fact defrauded them.
There’s nothing inherently arbitrary about single-party or class-action lawsuits against such fraudulent authors/publishers.
Block would dismiss that as a “continuum problem.” [:D]
Seriously, though, that problem is not specific to plagiarism. When is assault assault? When I go “Boo!” in your face? When I pretend to swing at you, but don’t? When I flick the side of your face with my open hand, or poke your shoulder with my index finger? All of those things arguably are assault–but such things would not usually result in a lawsuit, nor a deadly response. Cases of this sort are I think naturally handled by two factors.
First, there’s the “libertarian statute of limitations,” AKA the burden of proof. If you go “Boo!” and I shoot you, it’s easy to prove that I killed you, but hard to prove that self-defense was justified. This naturally prevents me from, say, shooting “trespassers” who cross my property line by only a few inches. And it prevents me from suing over “one letter? one word? a sentence?”
Second, there’s a simple cost-benefit analysis. Tiny infractions aren’t worth pursuing because the cost of litigation far outweighs the meager expected recovery.
–Len.
Demonstrably false: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License
And, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_copyright
However, this confusion is perfectly reasonable considering your confusing of a brand name with a “monopoly”.
Just because something is freely available does not make it “completely copyright free”.
Citing the abuses of copyright won’t get any arguments in this forum.
Ok, I understand your point, and I would agree that it would be considered fraud.
I quite agree, I am now a Linux convert. I do love Linux. I will never again buy Microsoft software.
I do not like Linux. I use XP I downloaded.
Of course, “Windows is Free”.
Interesting article. One person he mentioned reminded me of myself before I made the switch:
I was also shocked to learn how many people use pirated software. I never have, honest.
And properly so. The libertarian legal ethic can be applied consistently by assuming that implicit theft is at one end of continuum and proper action is at the other. There’s no need to assume that there’s a bold line somewhere between the two, because in a libertarian society such things would be decided on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes the court will rule with perfect justice, sometimes less so, but the ethic behind the ruling is not damaged by the fallability of the human actor.