dbarberi@rodan.acs.syr.edu (05/04/91)
Hello Netlanders,
My question is thus:
What should the laws of 'file ownership' be? Can a file
in your home computer or directory be considered personal property?
A hypothetical situation: A user is found to have a dir full
of unix /etc/passwd files from many other systems. Are the passwd
files the sole property of whatever site it is from? Or are they
the property of the user since they are in his directory?
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala) (05/05/91)
In article <1991May4.043306.3647@rodan.acs.syr.edu>, dbarberi@rodan writes: > What should the laws of 'file ownership' be? Can a file > in your home computer or directory be considered personal property? I sure hope information can not be considered property, but unfortunately at least some US courts (or is it prosecutors ?) seem to think differently. For more information and discussion on this, see March 1991 Communications of the ACM. There's an article handling just this question, can information be considered property, and also many other articles which probably are valuable to EFF readers. //Jyrki