As an author, I’d hate to see copyright vanish. As a nerd, I’d much rather have copyright than DRM. My beef with both is that they’re approaching eternal duration, and once the entity with the ability to grant copying privileges vanishes, any ease of spreading the intellectual content vanishes too.

Unless, of course, one is willing to break the Law. As long as I’m living under the rule of law, I’d prefer breaking it only when I feel strong incentive, not every time I want to do or appreciate something creative.

I guess I like the idea of copyright in principle, but not in its current implementation. Which is understandable. Let’s not let the perfect become the enemy of the good, though. I’d hate to see my stuff published without my having some control over the circumstances.

I didn’t imply copyright is a principle that should be supported, merely that it is a practice that exists in capitalist countries that is frequently despised by leftists. Actually Cuba does have copyright law, in theory, but communist and former communist countries seldom show much interest in enforcing such private rights, creations of the state though they may be.

Also, quoting someone in full is not in itself a breach of copyright.

On the contrary. You have it back to front. Quoting at all is an infringement of copyright in copyright material, unless the particular circumstances of the quotation make it not an infringement. Owners normally waive their rights for short quotes in non-commercial materials, but that’s only a matter of custom and the relative practicality of prosecution.

Welcome! I have often read and enjoyed your calm and reasoned posts at Tacitus.

It is a pleasure to see your name on a comment here.

Please say hello to Ken White for me. I no longer participate in the political warfare at Tac. I just got too bored with it.

It indicated that the leftists are as stupid as ever (not just one leftist, as the Guardian people would not have published it unless they thought it was making an interesting series of points).

Castro not a dictator, his hand picked “Executive Branch” not a dictatorship.

Even most academics would find it hard to go along with this nonsense.

And ordinary folk reading the letter would assume (correctly) that Castro’s supporters are morons.

As for Cuba.

Well a lot of money already goes from the United States to Cuba – people in the United States are allowed to send money back to their familes (and so on).

This money is very important for the Cuban ecomomy.

As for free travel to Cuba.

Fair enough (on general libertarian grounds) but I would not hold out high hopes for what it would achieve.

For example, lots of British people have gone to Cuba – yet the B.B.C. still broadcast (on the B.B.C. 2 “Newsnight” programme) a film claiming the Cuban health service was wonderful (“some of the highest standards of healthcare in the world”).

Total crap, but clearly the B.B.C. thought it could get away with broadcasting these lies.

Because tourists spend their time laying on beaches or going round looking at Spanish buildings (held up by U.N. and E.U. money) – rather than doing investigations into the state of health care for ordinary Cubans.

There’s nothing libertarian about copyright, which is a nasty invention of governments to reward booksellers and create an entirely artificial marketplace in ideas (a preposterous notion, really). I’m pleased to say that recent technological advancements may make copyright obsolote – at least, I live in hope. Also, quoting someone in full is not in itself a breach of copyright.

But I digress… Castro has one wonders to maintain his authoritarian regime, succeeding where so many other have failed. I like to think that his passing will result in a bitter power struggle leading to civil war, but I suspect a Chavez-friendly replacement is all lined up…

Referring to Fidel Castro as a “dictator” is at best a dubious label, applied most assiduously by those with intentions to kill him as means to justify their nefarious end. At any rate, I think it pertinent to point out that now that ill health has required Castro to hand power over to a committee made up of members of the executive branch, Cuba can most certainly no longer be described as a “dictatorship”, except perhaps that of the “proletariat”, in the now unfashionable Marxist sense of the term.

Dr Stephen Wilkinson
London

It’s a terribly dumb idea.
They should have been handed over to their co-patriots of the rival camps in the countries they were captured. They would have been treated acording to local custom (balls cut out, eyes gouged).
Maybe it’s not too late to have them have their wish, and hand them over to the authorities in the countries they were caught in.

I agree that the Guantanamo Bay camp is a terrible idea. The un-uniformed combatants who were captured should have been treated according to the customs of war, which is to say, summarily shot. That is the customary ‘legal’ fate of un-uniformed combatants after all.

Lest we forget the hapless souls who are imprisoned in Gitmo are enemy combatants. At one point they included some folks from the English West Midlands who were on a “computer course”. Such courses are obviously unavailable in Birmingham, Tipton, Dudley, West Bromwich… There is a reason I’m not in Camp X-Ray right now. I got on with my life in Manchester. I didn’t go to Afghanistan and wander around with an AK-47 playing Jihadi.

Your tag states you’re in Russia. Fine and dandy. What do you think the Russians would have done in similar circumstances? I suspect the answer wouldn’t be indefinite detention. I suspect it would have much more to do with a Makharov bullet in the back of the head and an unmarked grave.

And I’m not even going to mention the completely proportionate “remodelling” of Grozny.

… has set a model standard of “justice” that simply shames the regime in Havana by comparison?

It’s long overdue that Cuba’s armed forces stepped up to the plate to give the doughboys some R’n'R in Iraq – they can go there to referee the civil war and take the bullets, whilst those valiant American boys can fly to Varadero to spend their vacation with Cuban “comfort women” who will be whored-out in feelings of sympathy for the new “democratic” ally. Sounds like a fair deal, doesn’t it?

In general, I somehow suspect that rumours of the demise of the great escapologist are exagerated. Certainly, I’m not sure I could stand the continual re-fridging of the champagne that went along with the extendend pegging out of Yasser Arafat.

And what a shame it occurred in a state of the art French military hospital rather than the ditch he deserved.

They do not go quietly into that last goodnight, do they?