Quote from: Trade Runner on Today at 12:27:53 PM

Ok, it seems so we need a little legal and political excursion here. Copyright is the right to determine when, where and how an intellectual property may be distributed under which conditions. Now a Robin Hood of the internet like you comes and says: “No, I’m gonna determine this from now on. Because readers from Vietnam (and Africa and from wherever) are so poor, they (and, by the way, of course everyone from everywhere in the world) obtain now the permanent right of free and unlimited downloads – even though the original publisher charged a fee for downloading because he, his wife and his kids need a place to sleep and something to eat (which, by the way, is much more expensive in his country than it is in Vietnam, but that doesn't matter to me either). And because we have such a nice distributed network like Namecoin (and good working browser add-ons thanks to Trade Runner from Bitcointalk, who brought Namecoin finally back to life), we gonna use this network for the free distribution of everything. I think even movies and music should be distributed for free because other people in this world are so poor, and so we leverage the principle of capitalism using Namecoin, which as you know is backed by the powerful Bitcoin network.”

Well, that's not how things work! A scientist working on which study ever has to know and to accept that some scientific material is not for free. What you also didn't consider is that the scientist from Vietnam also needs even more a regular income after his publication – but according to your argumentation, his work would also have to be provided for free download as well, even though this scientist would need every single penny to survive. With Namecoin, in your opinion, a parallel society is to be built according to the principle of socialism, everyone gets everything for free, but also nothing for their work. History has shown us impressively that this doesn’t work. And hopefully Namecoin will never be used to build such a parallel universe!

There are different classes of 'things'. Some are properly controlled and restricted, some not.

It doesn't really matter whether anybody can download a movie or music for free. If you can't download one movie or music then download another.

Things like food are on the other end of the spectrum from movies. It is fine to take measures to increase a stranger's access to food, if you feel charitable, but restricting their access to food is proper grounds for war.

Scientific information is like digital food. If you restrict a group's or person's access to scientific information you are impeding their future survival.

Your comparison to socialism is asinine. There are no scientists worldwide, zero, who need income from articles to survive. Much less any in Vietnam. If a scientist claims he will starve if people don't buy his or her articles, he or she is lying and should be working at some other job anyway.

I don't really care whether that person uses Namecoin, it seems like an appropriate use of Namecoin, but it isn't my business what somebody else does to further their idea.

Your defense of copyrights as applied to science articles paints you as a corporate hack. You should re examine your philosophy in that regard or return to developing when you are a little older and less prone to the influence of corporate propaganda.