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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.
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 -------------------
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
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.
Ah, but you're wrong. If you look at the consumers really hard, they don't care what OS they get. If they have a preference at all, it is to have the same OS as last time, so they won't have to learn all the stuff all over again. They buy a PC, with standard features (such as CDROM, mouse, keyboard, and operating system).
What you're forgetting about, is another market, where the operating system is less visible. Linux is widely used for embedded devices. Your next VCR is more likely to run linux than windows. The next generation car stereos might be linux devices. Your home climate control might be operated by a linux device. See how popular TIVO is. You can get java phones.
These things are built with free (as in beer) software, because it saves the manufacturer money, and they also get other benefits (as in sharing). They get to tweak the software to do exactly what they want it to, and if they're lucky, the next release might even include their patches, so they can be up and running out of the box.
Consumers love their new devices, and with a "Powered by Gnu/Linux" sticker on them, they might even consider it for their PC. Getting users to switch operating systems is not easy, but MS has made the job easy for Linux. Make buggy software, charge a lot of money, bully other companies and get a tainted public image. As a result MS customers are not as religious as for example Apple customers, and they'd be very happy to jump ship.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.