Gnutella Forums - The story about the guy who was pirating fire in the bar

Quote:

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Gnutellatio:
I went on Gnutell.com once and saw this story.

It made sense and I've never been able to find it again.

If anyone knows of this, were there any other stories like this one posted on that website?

all it says now is:

It's all okay.

and a counter that displays hits to the page i guess...</font>

From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fire.html:

Quote:

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">I was in the pub last night, and a guy asked me for a light for his cigarette. I suddenly realised that there was a demand here and money to be made, and so I agreed to light his cigarette for 10 pence, but I didn't actually give him a light, I sold him a license to burn his cigarette. My fire-license restricted him from giving the light to anybody else, after all, that fire was my property. He was drunk, and dismissing me as a loony, but accepted my fire (and by implication the licence which governed its use) anyway. Of course in a matter of minutes I noticed a friend of his asking him for a light and to my outrage he gave his cigarette to his friend and pirated my fire! I was furious, I started to make my way over to that side of the bar but to my added horror his friend then started to light other people's cigarettes left, right, and centre! Before long that whole side of the bar was enjoying MY fire without paying me anything. Enraged I went from person to person grabbing their cigarettes from their hands, throwing them to the ground, and stamping on them.

Strangely the door staff exhibited no respect for my property rights as they threw me out the door.

--Ian Clarke</font>

That was the only story on that web site.

[This message has been edited by CycloCide (edited 04-28-2001).]