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Bob Young On Intellectual Property
Michael Manoochehri writes: "Slashdot readers might be interested in this interview I did with Center for the Public Domain and Red Hat Chairman Bob Young. Bob talks about the goals of the center, the future of Public Domain, and the state of the world's IP. In this time of constant ideological attack on open-source software by Microsoft, it is refreshing to hear a contrasting (and well spoken) viewpoint." Slashdot also interviewed Bob Young a few months ago.
I live in Virginia's 6th district and have to be "represented" by Bob Goodlatte. He claims to be a great champion of technology, yet he proves his ignorance time and again especially on copyright and patent law. He understands exactly what the problems are with the DMCA and he flat out doesn't see them as problems at all. He openly attacks critics of the DMCA as thieves and pirates (literally). I once tried to talk to him about it and he jumped me right then and there with accusations that the DMCA's critics were dishonest people that advocate the theft of the hard work of creators.
The worst part about this is that this mindset is symptomatic of the majority of the baby boomer generation from what I've seen. My parents felt almost the same way that Goodlatte feels for some time. It was only when I started showing them how I could be thrown into debt and my life utterly ruined for doing university research and stuff like that on copyright systems that they began to see the light. Yet like most baby boomers they still don't see the DMCA as being all that bad. It is only my generation, the generation in high school and college now, that sees the DMCA for what it is. The DMCA helped push me away from being a leftist to being a libertarian. In fact Harry Browne's denunciations of our current IP laws convinced me that despite the areas where I disagree with the LP, it is the only party with a sane political platform. That is why when I turn 18 in less than a month I'm registering with the VA-LP.
It has taken the imprisonment of over 1,000,000 Americans for the public to begin questioning the mindless war on drugs (I still think buying foreign drugs should be illegal, especially drugs made in columbia... but not domestic drugs). The only way for Americans to see that the mindless war on "pirates" and "thieves" (IP "thieves that is") must be ended. Many Americans will have to have their lives, liberty and property ruined by the cartels (RIAA, MPAA, to name a few) and bear witness to the rantings and ravings of the IP-authoritarians before the public will call for its end. Civil disobedience is all we have left. Buy as many cds as you want, but when secure formats come out refuse to buy them. Send a message: "hey hey, ho ho protection schemes have gotta go!!!" to the companies and they will finally get the idea. When they are stuck between a rock (distributing in unprotected formats) and a hard place (distributing in secure formats, but having only
Posted anonymously because I may enter ROTC then the US Army and don't wish to bring possible reprisal on myself, family or friends.
RMS has *zero* power to choose to close Linux (or even the HURD) to commercial apps. The code is already out there and licensed such that all can use it and extend it. That *cannot* be undone. For code that is "owned" by the FSF, he/they could release further versions that are not GPLed. These versions would be ignored by the general Linux public and die a quiet death. Meanwhile, others would continue to develop the irrevocably GPLed current versions of gcc et al.
The FSF uses the LGPL pragmatically, when licensing code in that fashion furthers the ultimate goal of free software. If they were so gung-ho to abandon it, why create it in the first place?
The rest of your argument, being based on an incorrect understanding of the license issues, is thus baseless.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
You'd be better off buying T-Shirts, going to their shows, or sending them a donation. CD sales result in little in the way of tangible money. Your $18 resulted in less than 3-5% going to the artist... if he/she is lucky. (Independent labels are usually better, but you mentioned two bands on a major label) For CD sales to provide any real financial benefit, the record would have had to been recorded cheaply, marketed spectacularly (but cheaply) and sold insanely well.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
With all due respect to Mr. Young, there really is no such thing as free market coexisting with IP laws. IP laws are not designed to free the market but to restrict its freedom. So we are left in a quandary: how does a free society finance scientific research without IP restrictions on its freedom? How do programmers, artists, etc.. make a living if they cannot live off their work?
The purpose of IP laws was to provide the 'small' entrepreneur a way to succeed against the large ones. If I invent a remarkable (simple) product in my basement, and it becomes fabulously successful, without copyright or IP, what prevents MegaCorp X from cloning my product, selling it cheaper (since they can afford to) and wiping me out of business?
I mean, the real goal was to keep small inventors and artists from turning into free R&D labs for big companies.
(Of course, this point has been spectacularly missed in the US with corp-favouring laws like the DCMA being passed.)
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
Absolutely! I came away with a much-altered impression of the man, I thought he did quite well. And I couldn't agree more about the stupid "$". Get rid of that idiocy and you might have something of some journalistic quality...
-D
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
I disagree. Name-calling never serves a purpose- it conveys no new information (if you get the joke of the name, you already know the point that's being made by it), it degrades the level of the discussion, and it makes the speaker sound like a 4-year-old who isn't getting what he wants. There are always better ways of underlining your point. For example, instead of saying "demopublicans and republicrats", the interviewer could have said "our increasingly indistinguishable political parties" or some such.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
I'm not saying they're four-letter words, and my argument has nothing to do with political correctness. You have every right to say them. Moreover, I agree with the point you're making- the Democrats and the Republicans are in many ways failing to deliver the political choice a free society needs. All I'm saying is that those words are not likely to get their speaker taken very seriously. I'm sure, if your apply your apparently formiddable intellectual powers to it, you may be able to come up with a less juvenile way of "speaking the truth" about our political parties, without sacrificing the integrity of your position.
By the way, as far as my being well-trained by CNN, I can't stand TV news, and haven't watched CNN since the Gulf War. How's that for training?
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
On the whole, it's a very interesting article, but I kept cringing at the the interviewer. It's not so much the fact that he's clearly biased that bothers me, it's the way the bias degrades the quality of the interview
Of course, there's one of my personal pet peeves, "Micro$oft." I suppose I can understand the desire to call names in private discourse, chatrooms, or wherever, but let's not mince words- it's still name-calling, plain and simple. It's what we did in preschool when we couldn't think of anything else to say, and yet because we're talking about the Great Satan, it's somehow supposed to be reasonable, even witty. Guess what? You still sound like a 4-year-old, and trying to incorporate "Micro$oft" into a serious, intelligent discussion (much less a journalistic interview) is about as effective as saying "Bill Gates is a poo-poo head." Ditto for "Demopublicans" and "Republicrats."
And then we have Mr. Young (quite rightly) arguing that we should consider the merits of openness as it applies to a particular situation, rather than blindly applying Open Source as the cure for all ills. In other words, he is arguing in favor of intelligent thought, as opposed to knee-jerking, and our esteemed interviewer unbelievably goes out of his way to disagree, citing the South African AIDS issue. Is this man seriously claiming that some issues are so morally objectionable that we must abandon discretion, stop thinking, and just blindly shout "Open Source"? Either he's doing frighteningly little thinking himself, or he's just not listening to his interviewee. Neither possibility reflects very well on the quality of this interview.
On the other hand, kudos to Mr. Young for an intelligent, coherent, and eminently reasonable interview.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
I agree many have "tried" linux and said it isnt ready. and those people tried it a really long time ago. I have easily converted several people to linux with my mixture (that any non-computer person can do themselves) Redhat 7.1 and Ximian 1.4 Easier to use than Microsoft products, already comes with what you need as far as software goes, and I have yet to find something that didn't work (hardware)that was a quality product (I.E. is not a winprinter or winmodem or winsomething)
I even converted a die-hard MS gamer when he said linux has no games for it and I showed him Unreal,Q3,Simcity3000,Alpha Centauri,civilization CTP.. and then asked,"what did you say?"
Granted, some things are hard to do, but then they are just as hard in MS products.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You are confusing your interpretation of the aims of an organisation with the necessary consequence of releasing your code under one particular licence. You also seem to be under the mistaken impression that I consider writing open source software to be a viable method of earning a wage.
True, once there is a sufficiently large codebase licenced under the GPL and owned by the FSF, they could release it all again under a new, much more restrictive version of the GPL.
They wouldn't be able to stop you from using the version that you already had under the terms of the licence that you received with it, however. They also wouldn't be able to force you to relicence any software that you had already written. Unless people started to use the new versions of their software under the new licence in sufficient numbers, they would fail to make much of an impact. Given the voracity with which people around these parts leap upon any perceived attempts to limit their freedom, I don't think the FSF would have much success.
You're right about RMS - he does try to persuade people not to use the LGPL, and some of his ideas are somewhat extreme, to put it mildly. I think RMS has his heart in the right place, and serves a useful purpose; without extremists on both sides, there is a danger of straying too far from the middle ground. For example, consider RMS apparently wanting to destroy proprietary software, and MS apparently wanting to destroy Free software. If only one existed, I think people would tend to drift towards them eventually. With both denouncing the other, people will hopefully see the flaws in both their arguments and strive for a more balanced approach, taking the best of both.
Sorry about the ad hominem attack, but it's been a trying few days at work. I too have a partner and a kid to support; I wouldn't even consider trying to make a living writing open source software. However, I never suggested that you should, either.
The bottom line is that the GPL itself is not trying to hijack anyone's efforts. The FSF may attempt to use it to that end, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the GPL itself. Just because patents are, on occasion, misused doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with the intent of giving the creators of IP a way to protect it temporarily.
If you don't like the GPL, that's fine, don't use it, but please don't attribute to it your perceptions of the intention of its creator.
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Free Software developers on the other hand resort to legal IP games to hijack others efforts with a highly restrictive GPL, or similar, licenses.
Sorry, you're going to have to explain that one to me, because I really don't understand.
If I write a piece of software and release it under the GPL, in what way am I hijacking other's efforts? All I'm doing is saying "here you go, hope it's useful, feel free to give it to your friends, make modifications, etc - oh, if you do, though, you have to let people have the source, just like I did you, and crediting me as original author would be nice too".
I'm not forcing anyone to make modifications and give away their hard work, I'm just giving them the opportunity to do so, whilst at the same time preventing them from taking my hard work and profiting from it. The GPL and similar licences do exactly the opposite of wht you claim - they prevent the hard work of people from being hijacked by others.
Yes, RMS has argued that all software should be free. However, whilst the majority of it is not, it seems perfectly reasonable to me to create a licence that provides people with more freedom than others, whilst denying them the right to abuse that freedom. (Note that I express no opinion as to whether or not all software should be Free.)
I really am getting tired of saying this, but no-one is forcing anyone to release their code under the GPL. If you think of a great feature that, say, gcc should have but hasn't, then you are free to implement it and distribute your version, complete with source. If, however, you want to charge for it and withold the source, that's fine too. All you have to do is rewrite gcc from scratch, just like you would have to if it was a commercial compiler.
You know, the more I read your comment, the more you sound like someone who really wants to take other people's work and profit from it, and is pissed that the GPL is preventing you from doing that.
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Yes, it is. If I buy Microsoft Office, I am buying software that works. If I download StarOffice, I am getting software that doesn't work. If I download some random utility from FreshMeat, I am downloading something that is almost guaranteed not to work and to be held together with hooks and bailing wire. Denial about the flakiness of open source software is one of the most serious problems in the community.
thirty seconds with CodeWarrior rather than five minutes with GCC for "free" can't do simple math. Thousands of dollars would be wasted every week by the "free" solution.
Lessee the math here... Average developer: $60/hour (prolly less, but this makes it easier). $1/minute. With CodeWarrior, you claim 30 seconds to go, and gcc, 5 minutes to go. That's great! You've just saved me $4.50/developer! So, lessee, licensing of CodeWarrior: $200+/seat. Licensing of GCC: $0/seat. Oh, shit, there just went $195.50/developer. Now, how do I get bugs fixed? CodeWarrior: Submit the bug to them, hope they fix it, pay for upgrade. GCC: Grab the source, find the bug, fix it, and start using it. Give it back to the steering committee while I'm at it, since that's probably a requirement (if I'm distributing it).
What the hell, I'll stick with CodeWarrior. After all, it's a superior environment. Now, I need the AIX version, since we're developing a product on AIX. How much is that? Oh, wait, it's not available? Damn, there goes that option.
Yep, CodeWarrior is the best option. Much rather have a product which costs a lot, gives me zero portability, and takes control of fixes away from me.
No, user friendliness is not a "small hurdle." It's a paradigm shift that requires an entirely different development model. The problem is well studied and I could recommend you some books if I thought you'd actually read them. It is a shift that free software has not made. Due to the insistence on programmers designing their own interfaces, it is a shift that the free software community can not make.
What's wrong with this statement? "I'm not a tinkerer. I needed a stable router/firewall." You are not a software consumer -- you are a system administrator.
Hmmm, how about that. My dad is a system administrator. He'd be surprised to know that, since he works as an RN on the 3rd floor of the local hospital, and couldn't tell you most of anything about firewalls. But, he does know that he needs one to protect his machine from getting hacked, and he knows it's better to have it be external.
As for non-geek social affairs, I'm married to one (soon enough to be divorced at the rate I'm going). Your example is a poor one. How would I do it? You heard about the latest virus which will hit your machine from the internet and wipe out your drives? I guarantee that most of the people in the room will be asking how to stop it, and I can mention the firewall/router then.
GPL made simple: What was my stuff is now our stuff. If you improve our stuff, please keep it our stuff.
Agreed. So, what's the bug number for the report you filed with them, so that they can fix it? I'd like to try it again after the fix is done, and to do that, I need to track the bug's progress through Sun.
Brilliant TCO analysis! It's very applicable to the case of a single-programmer team who uses the software exactly once. I'm sure that's the most common case. Remind you to include you if we do a CFO search.
Very good turn back! I'm impressed. You took what was described as the startup time, replied to as the startup time, and compared it to TCO, thus turning me into the fool. I AM impressed.
Even starting to fix a single bug in a big project like the Linux kernel, GCC, or Mozilla will take weeks of startup time familiarizing yourself with the idiosyncracies of the source. If you haven't been on the chat rooms or mailing lists with the core team for months, they won't even look at your bug fixes. The supposed ease of fixing bugs in open source software is one of the community's Big Lies.
Depends on the nature and severity of the bug, plus the design of the code base. Some bugs are non-trivial, some are trivial. Most trivial ones have been found and fixed already, to be sure. Nice redirect, too. I didn't comment on the ease of fixing the bugs, only the possibility. Where I did comment on the ease was in how easy it was to have it happen, period. Dealing with a commercial, closed source vendor, you don't have any leverage (unless you've got deep pockets) to get any particular bug fixed. Dealing with an open source vendor, it doesn't matter. You have the code, you can fix it (or at least try to). An option which is not available with the closed source guys (like, say, CodeWarrior).
Try anything by Deborah J. Mayhew.
Thank you, I will. It's always good to have more resources, and I do appreciate it.
My point exactly. Good user experience design takes money.
Well, something we do agree on, at least. Well, to some degree. The other thing usability design takes, which you neglect to mention, is users. More importantly, users who will tell you why your design sucks or is great. Those are in even shorter supply than money for the OS community (heck, from the money aspect, we've got IBM, Sun, HP, etc, trying to help out). But users who will provide feedback about the interface? Go find me five of them, and I'll be shocked.
(Just FYI, firewalls don't usually have much to do with viruses. Firewalls are mostly about DoS and intrusion prevention.)
You are, of course, right. But I was only illustrating that you can get people to listen, not what would be technically correct. Unless, of course, you count that at least some DDoS tools have been distributed as virii.
So, I await word on how your non-programmer, non-admin father (or wife) got along with the Linux Router configuration.
My dad? He got me to install it. But he knew he needed one. My wife? Won't go near the computer anymore, hates it because I use it too much.
GPL made simple: What was my stuff is now our stuff. If you improve our stuff, please keep it our stuff.
Ahhh, wait a minnit. Many people refer to Star Office, and ignore Open Office, which according to Sun is the next official version of Star Office. Noticeable changes, including a bug reporting page. Now, I admit that Star Office 5.2 does have issues. Might I recommend trying out what is actually the next official revision of it? I've had ever better success with it than with 5.2.
All depends on the vendor. In my experience most commercial software vendors are pretty good at fixing major bugs reported by their customers. OTOH, lots of open source developers complain about their fixes for open source bugs being stonewalled -- there have been some notable
Agreed. Major bugs do tend to get fixed quickly. I think this happens in all environments though. However, special case bugs (in both open and closed source) tend to have the hardest time getting put in, since it's usually viewed as not a real issue. At least, that's been what I've seen. Unless you're paying somebody to fix the bug, a minor issue will be ignored for as long as possible. The difference I was trying to point out is the possibility to fix the bug yourself. While it might not be easy to do, it is possible, which is more than can be said for any closed source vendor.
Sorry for the shortness of the reply, and how long it took to do. Had some problems reaching here for the past two days. Anyway, it's late and I'm tired, so I'll ask this: Are we really arguing, or are we simply pointing out that the coin has both heads and tails?
GPL made simple: What was my stuff is now our stuff. If you improve our stuff, please keep it our stuff.
But then there are the "borderline" users. A friend of a friend was exasperated enough with m$ garbage she decided to take the plunge and cross over from the dark side.
She did a default install of RedHat. After hearing so much hype about Linux, she must have expected a wondrously colorful world full of new and exciting experiences to open up before her, but that isn't what happened, at least in her eyes.
I'm not sure which version of RedHat she installed, but I'm pretty sure is was an earlier version that used Gnome as the default desktop.
She was terribly disappointed with her experience because "RedHat looks too much like Windows." She added "I'm going to try another distribution."
God, if that's the way she feels about Gnome, wait 'till she sees KDE!
The problem is that this was someone who could have been won over, but she wasn't because everyone in the Linux community is too busy chasing m$'s tail.
Where is our innovation? When do we take the lead? Where is the killer app that takes the world by storm that the Linux community "innovated"? Why are we so absorbed with m$ "compatability?"
World domination will not be won by following m$'s wake with an office clone, but by leading the world into new territory. The m$ killer app will be one that is so sexy, so enticing, so irresistible that no one will want to be without it. There will be little to no cross platform compatability.
"You want this, get Linux!"
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satire, n: 1) witty language used to convey insults or scorn; 2) a form of humor lost on most slashdot moderators.
The "Common Computer User" as Slashdot readers are so quick to cite does not believe everything Microsoft feeds them.
In fact the common user:
The entire fear behind GPL, is that someone will take your work and make a killing from it.
As opposed to the current system.
A matter of personal opinion, of course. There are people a lot smarter than you are, who have the exact opposite opinion about the page in question.
Care to name some?
Some are listed on my site. Feel free to write to them. Several among them are full physics professors at major universities. Don't think for a second that the time-travel and wormhole con artists have a monopoly on what's accepted in the physics community.
But then again, I also get emails from young kids who have no trouble grasping that nothing can move in spacetime. Too bad you can't do the same, eh? Besides, it's my credibility to reduce or increase as I see fit.
Zeno's paradox is a fallacy, "nemesis".
Proof by assertion, I see. Not even the greatest scientists of the world held such power. Besides, there are more than one Zeno's "paradox." Get a clue.
By the way, how do you equate everyone agreeing with you with everyone violently disagreeing with you and still keep a straight face?
"Violently" is the right word for it. Many, like you, take it to heart, jumping up and down and foaming at the mouth. Indeed I can't keep a straight face. It's rather amusing. See ya!
Nobody is arguing that there is no motion. In fact that is precisely what I argue against. One of Zeno's pardoxes (the paradox of the arrow) does prove that, if one assumes the existence of a time, there can be no motion. Rather than sit around and scream that the paradox is false because there is motion in the world, the sensible thing to do is to eliminate the one assumption that makes it false, the time axis. And, of course, if there is no time axis there is no time travel either.
The sensible thing to do is to eliminate the one assumption that makes it false, the time axis.
That is not the only possible assumption that makes it false: another assumption is that time and space can both be divided infinitely. If they can't then movement becomes possible again.
I agree. The continuity assumption (infinite divisibilty) is part of the other "paradoxes" of Zeno. Get rid of the continuity and time assumptions and the problem is solved. It's simple. But would you believe that famous and celebrated physicists like Kip Thorne and Stephen Hawking have trouble grasping this? Instead of doing what you just did, they would rather come up with a bunch of cockamamie nonsense like time travel. Go figure!
I don't see any reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Spacetime exists, sure, just some of the extrapolations thrown about are nonsense.
Not at all. Spacetime cannot exist because it makes motion impossible. I thought you understood Zeno's paradox of the arrow but aparently not. A time dimension forbids motion.
I'm all in favor of the benefits that society at large gains from active competition in for-profit free markets.
[...]
Without patents the drug companies would not have done the research to create the aids drugs in the first place so the whole issue would be moot. But clearly it is not in anyone's interest including the drug companies to charge so much for their product that their consumers (patients) cannot afford them. So they need to figure out how to charge less (in Africa - a lot less) in markets where the consumers cannot afford the regular price.
With all due respect to Mr. Young, there really is no such thing as free market coexisting with IP laws. IP laws are not designed to free the market but to restrict its freedom. So we are left in a quandary: how does a free society finance scientific research without IP restrictions on its freedom? How do programmers, artists, etc.. make a living if they cannot live off their work?
The way I see it, there is no such thing as intellectual property. If you can't lock it up or put a fence around it, it does not belong to you.Once you release it to the world it belongs to nobody and to everybody. The only property worthy of the name is tangible property. A economic system based on human labor will not survive, whether it is communism or capitalism. What will happen to a slave economy when AI and advanced automation replaces everybody? It will collapse, that's what.
So now the IP owners can only rely on powerful police states to enforce their "property." And it will get worse. The only way to truly enforce IP laws in the age of the internet and file sharing technologies is by instituting increasingly Orwellian governing bodies that continually spy on its citizens. When that happens, I hope the people of the world rise up against it.
We will not be truly free until we are all guaranteed an inheritance in the land and its wealth, a piece of the pie. What we do with our piece should be up to us. The wealth of the earth is the earth and it should not be divided for a price so that it ultimately ends up under the control of the few while everyone else is forced to be slave. It should be divided up and given to the people. Only then will we have a free market where nobody is forced to suck up to those who would enslave us. Knowledge should only serve as a mechanism for increasing the wealth of the earth.
Once we have a society based of giving rather than taking, we will openly share our knowledge with one another. We will cooperate and freely share our knowledge so that society as a whole benefits. Someone recently emailed me this delightful quote by Benjamin Franklin: "As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."
This can only happen in truly free society. Slaves cannot be expected to give freely to others when their livelihood depends on competing against other slaves. The system forces us to exploit our fellow human beings. It must be changed or we will soon face disaster.
1) We really are like Pac Man. We want to eat all the software in the world nad make it impossible to for a business to make money with computers.
2) Software patents suck! We patented software patents so that no one else will ever be able to get one! Aren't we clever? We're going to patent air, too! Boy, aren't we clever?
3) Open Source really is a cancer! We've been collaborating with the alien invaders for years now and have implanted chips in the back of the neck of every open source developer who's ever written a line of GPL code!
4) We want the internet to be all free and peace and love and all that stuff! We wish the lawyers and AOL and everyone would just go away!
5) No one here listens to RMS. He's a hippy and hippies suck. Mmkay?
Now that you know what the story's about, post away!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If you spent $1000 on a piece of crap not worth 50 cents, you'd have a hard time accepting it too!
Actually, they don't come about -- For too many people, the reality is that because the production of drugs is money oriented, they will die a painful and disgraceful death after having lived their decrepit lives without the benefits of modern science simply because we care more about money.
You dismiss Young's claims of government intervention in the software market. Let's remember the most fundamental intervention: the invention of 'intellectual property' rights. These are a non-obvious construct and their application to software is also non-obvious and was disputed at the time. Selling identical copies of a string of bits is not a viable business model unless the government uses coercion to protect your monopoly.
And I disagree that commercial software offers superior reliability. I will grant performance as a theoretical point - commercial vendors have the resources to optimize things - but not as a real issue. For example, IIS is faster than Apache, but in reality a very slow site is usually powered by IIS. Unix and related software contain many decisions that elevated flexibility and elegance over raw speed. It turns out that in practice, flexible, elegant software lends itself to fast systems.
It is very important for us to buy the cds that we like, not copy them for free. Why? If your favorite artist is selling virtually no records because everyone copies their albums, then they will be dumped most likely as soon as the label can afford to do so. You aren't hurting the corporation so much as you are hurting the artist. I love the Offspring and Oleander, that is why I have no bootlegs of their cds. I buy them all, at full price if necessary because I like what they put out and I get my money's worth every new album. Remember folks, you are only hurting the corporation indirectly and it has the means to survive, but you are directly hurting the artists. Some may be able to survive, but most will not. I hate the DMCA as much as the next guy, that is why when I get out of college (I'm gonna be a CS major hopefully) I plan to get a law degree so I can fight such laws, but we have to use some intelligence here!!
You either require authentication to a central location to use the program and make it hard to crack, or you never let the software sit on the users computer in the first place. Both distribution methods were not possible prior to the existance of the internet but now are perfectly feasable.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
Even given that fact if you put 10% of the functionality of the application on a secure server its going to be impossible to "steal" time on the program unless you duplicate the missing functionality on your own servers. At that point the way people will try to solve the problem is hacking accounts to steal time and we are half way decent at stoping unauthorized access to servers (no not perfect but better than we are at stoping people from cracking software).
Anyways this is far off my initial point was that people are upset at the idea of "intellectual property" because they feel that the software is virtual and does not have value. For this reason I advocate having software be a service where you pay for the amount you use. This way benifit can be correlated to benifit recieved, not to amount of material recieved.
I mean you pay a car wash or a doctor or mechanic for services and never expect any physical result in return so why can't that apply to software? I guess people will still argue that letting 2 people use the software doesn't cost any more than letting 1 person use it so the second person should get to use it for free. Unfortunately you will always have consumers wanting more for less but in a free economy the suppliers want to make less and get more for it. The key is to let the natural balance happen because this maximises the total value in the system (by removing the surplus or shortages).
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
Some couple hundred years ago it was agreed that artists, authors, inventors, and others that used intellectual efforts to create works for the public good should be rewarded for that effort.
Rewarded yes. But is a government-granted monopoly the only way to reward creation of works of authorship? I'd say the future belongs to services and sponsorships. Instead of making money selling records, a would-be Britney Spears could be making money performing, or putting slick ads into her songs (though less flagrantly than "The Joy of Pepsi").
Not everyone agrees, and are free to lobby to change the law of our society
Lobbying is currently defined as donating millions of dollars to a politician's campaign. Who, outside of big faceless corporations with an interest in preserving their monopolies, has the money for that? Most people are so dazzled by marketing that they actively reject the truth about the way the system works (perpetual copyright terms, copyrights that act like patents, region price discrimination coding).
those that don't, can find other contries with a society that agrees with them in this area ... Maybe by being invited to move to someplace they think is better.
Who has $500,000 to spend to move a family and a career, including the cost of learning a new language and culture?
have yet to learn about the value of that compromise.
You call 125-year American copyrights (life + 70 years) a compromise? Take off a century and I'd agree. Bottom line: Write your representatives.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The code is already out there and licensed such that all can use it and extend it. That *cannot* be undone.
Except by deprecating the hardware on which the software runs (think VHS => DVD or NTSC => HDTV) or by embracing and extending the protocols that the software speaks. It would have been better titled "When not to use LGPL" rather than "Why not to use LGPL".
RMS's essay advocates using viral GPL only for libraries that have no proprietary equivalent. A more permissive license (e.g. Lesser GPL or even the New BSD license) is indicated in highly competitive fields (e.g. C libraries; graphics infrastructure; audio compression).
Will I retire or break 10K?
A medium that is completely, perfectly reproduceable costing on a few cents to do is inherently different then a medium that takes years to perfect duplication of and costs X times more to duplicate. Ask yourself why a limited print run is so *much* cheaper than an actual painting, It's the same artist.
Having just a original that can be mass produced exactly as the original doesn't mean much, having a *scarce* individual product does.
There are NO rights in society, except for those we collectively agree to. 29,000 years ago as man evolved, the only right was kill or be killed, for food or property.
Some couple hundred years ago it was agreed that artists, authors, inventors, and others that used intellectual efforts to create works for the public good should be rewarded for that effort. Our society as a whole accepts, and largely accepts, that as a right - those that don't, can find other contries with a society that agrees with them in this area (and probably not others).
Not everyone agrees, and are free to lobby to change the law of our society - they are not free to selectively pick and choose which laws they car to accept and enforce - that is the nature of our association. Play by the rules, or go elsewhere. Violate MY rights, as we have has a society agreed, then face societies judgement.
Certain totalitarian governments are controlled by individuals that believe it's their right to kill, rob, rape, or harm anyone they choose. And by *their* laws they not only have the right, but the freedom to do so. I prefer our societies, dispite the compromises we sometimes have to make - as a much better tradeoff.
The clueless that claim to not be bound by a societies rules, have yet to learn about the value of that compromise. Maybe by being invited to move to someplace they think is better.
If they are against intellectual property, why do they have those and will they sue if someone use this name?.....I would really want to get an answer from Bob on this.
Well, if you actually read what he says....
In other words, Bob isn't saying that *all* intellectual property is bad, rather he is saying...
He also mentions in the article that each case in IP has to be dealt differently. You can't just imply the same rules to genetics, software, trademarks and ideas. You have to look at each individually. He points out that the Center of Public Domain is about raising awareness about these issues and these issues have to be re-examined. So, Bob has already answered your question.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
They do? That must be why Windows has a desktop market share of around 95% while Linux has a desktop market share well under 1%.
Oh wait, there's an explanation:
But the technology markets were not being left to market forces. The government is playing an increasing role at the urging of the major global publishing organizations.
Apparently the reason Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, etc. software is preferred by the market is due to government interference. That makes sense. I hear the government has been trying to help Microsoft for years, especially the Justice Department!
In all seriousness, consumers do not prefer free software or open source, unless by consumers we mean the tiny community of open source system administrators. The reason is that commercial software is superior to free software in features, friendliness, attractiveness, performance, and reliability. Free software appeals to tinkerers and hobbyists, who represent a very small portion of the market.
Tim
As far as I can tell, a recent slashdot feature on the history of copyright law showed the opposite. For every revision of copyright laws, they slash away more and more of the fair use, and they take more and more away from public domain.
So if it's been moving the wrong way for 200 years, we should have a decent law by 2400 or so, assuming that things start swinging the right way from now on?
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
This comparison that is made to drug companies is this article is rather troublesome to me. Though I see some correlation, it's somewhat of a stretch. If you stop and think about it, the idea of a for-profit drug company is pure absurdity. If they were truly successful in their own research, they would drive themselves out of business. When was the last time a drug company developed a vaccine or a cure for anything? I'm no historian, but all the cures and vaccines I know of were developed by independent scientists or non-profit research groups. (If I'm way off base, please let me know.) Drug companies benefit most from the least effective solution that people will pay for. Of course, what that solution is continues to increase in effectiveness over time (painkillers have become more advanced), but there is no money (in the long-term) in providing a true solution. You can only sell it once!
Now, how does this relate to software? Certainly software companies don't want to sell only one version of their software ever, because it's the same predicament as the drug companies. If Microsoft's subscription-based licensing idea comes to pass, software licenses will indeed become almost like prescriptions. However, beyond this point, the comparison breaks down. The big difference here is that the difference between the independently developed "cure", and the "pain-killing" prescription has little to do with whether of not the backing research is in the public domain. As far as John Q. User is concerned, it's not that the non-Microsoft software is open source, it's that it's free. You will not come across many free drugs these days, regardless of who developed them. They're a physical product, and even the generic asprin costs money to produce and distribute. The somewhat abstract nature of programs makes them significantly different. The number of people who use closed source implementations who would even have the know-how to compile a program from source is nil. If movements like open source are really interested in making any sort of inroads against the closed source giants, distribution of simple to install, free binaries are at least twice as important as providing source code.
"The general contract of the method run is that it may take any action whatsoever." -- Java 2 API
This is really what we need at this point in the development of popular Open Source and openess in general. We have much of the software in place to keep most people happy in linux. Printing and gaming are a bit of an issue, but most of the applications are coming along. The one thing we lack is a real REASON for the average Joe Q. Public user to use Linux or any other open source OS over Windows. Trying to raise the awareness of where our freedom is going in general is the right thing to do. Whether or not the GPL or Linux survives is really irrelevant to the issue. The issue is that having one entity control the industry, any industry, is not good for the consumer. I truly hope The Center for the Public Domain spearheads a movement to get these issues out and in the public eye.
Windows is more convenient than Linux just as having an ingrown toenail is more convenient than seeing a podiatrist.