Python obfuscation

[Mike Meyer]

Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> writes:
> "The Eternal Squire" <eternalsquire at comcast.net> writes:
>> Without copyright, how could one possibly earn a living writing a
>> novel?  
> This guy seems to be doing ok:  http://craphound.com
> His publishers are the only ones allowed to sell his novels commercially,
> but you can download them all and print them out noncommercially for
> your own personal enjoyment or to share with your friends.  No obfuscation
> is needed.

Not really a good counterexample, because "His publishers are the only
ones allowed to sell his novels commercially" is only possible because
of copyright. Without that, anyone could take the downloadable copy of
his novels and start competing with his publishers - presumably with
lower overhead, because they didn't have to pay Cory.

Asking about novels is an excellent question - it's one of the few
forms of copyrightable material where it's not the final end product
and you have to give the public access to the media for them to use
it. If either one of those isn't true, you can probably find a
business model that doesn't depend on copyright.

       <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.