Thread: well respected reviewer "eldar" throwing caution to N900
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allnameswereout is offline allnameswereout
2009-09-25 , 18:18
Posts: 3,397 | Thanked: 1,212 times | Joined on Jul 2008 @ Netherlands
#241
Originally Posted by danramos View Post
Copying for yourself is SUPPOSED to generally fall under 'fair use' provisions in our laws--it's, in fact, a right granted by the Constitution. Illegally distributing, publicly performing, and making money off of someone else's production, while illegal, no... NONE of that is STEALING and it's boggling logic to equate any of that with robbing a person of one's possession when you've simply duplicated a possession and left the original copy intact. Illegal, maybe.. but it's not 'stealing.' Let's try and illegally COPY that guy's television or microwave, over there, before we start equating them.
For example, the crimes committed in this case were both copyright infringement as well as cracking. This was however via Internet while we don't know how Eldar obtained the alleged N900 prototype hardware/software.

Obtaining it involved a physical deed not committed over the Internet, and given he 1) leaked confidential information 2) is afraid for Nokia to find his personal details it appears he did not receive his N900 prototype through legal circuits. Therefore, it is reasonable to suspect Eldar of a crime, most likely 'theft' indeed.

You can applaud him for releasing confidential information which you'd have received (albeit later) anyway much like you can applaud the HL2 cracker to spread source code of HL2 but I know in the latter case some people compiled the source and played the game, while it was not stable. This gave HL2 a bad name. One can also argue 'better bad publicity than none at all'; OK, might be true.
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