kaveman: you are right about the origin of copyright. Patents were invented to accomodate the spread of knowledge, I believe somewhere in the 16th or 17th century. Today they are used to prevent knowledge from being spread, it seems. A very sad development indeed. That said, I definitely don't condone using someone else's intellectual property and passing it off as your own. It should be possible to create a derivative work and distribute it, provided that an agreement is made with the original creator. Usually that means the original creator gets a cut of the profit, or in the case of encoding, the original creator has a good chance of increasing his sales. There is nothing wrong with making money!

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

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