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Nick Moffitt Interview

Posted by michael on from the give-the-monkey-another-hit dept.

Swedish hacker-wannabee writes "Nick Moffitt is in an interesting interview at Gnuheter. Moffitt: 'I want to see a future where when I buy something, I own it. I don't want corporations and governments telling me how I may or may not use my own private property in my own home or among my friends. I want the ability to take apart my toaster or my alarm clock and see how they work, or combine them into something new. I don't think this future is possible without some serious effort on the part of hackers.'"

2 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Pehaps the most idiotic things i've heard lately. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    So you want to buy things and own them with disregard to gov't regulations.
    Maybe you don't realize how open that argument is to abuse. So just because you can afford a car you should be able to drive it off road, over your neighbours lawn and cat. Maybe if you can buy a gun you should be appoint yourself sheriff and re-create the wild west in your front lawn.

    Or maybe your bitching is just about copyrighted music. So what? fair use includes making backups. You just can't share albums you've bought for sale or to people who haven't bought them. But then again you probably don't have a legitimate music collection, just a HD of britney spears and n-sync that somehow is your god-given-right to pirate.

    Some of us (but not the majority of bitchy lamers) actually create a marketable product for a living (code, graphics) why should some prick d/l what I spend my time on? Did i give permission to share it out to the rest of the world? The whole intellectual property argument isn't about the metallica's or britney spears of the world (they're actually faily few and far between belive it or not). A totally pirate frendly environment really kills innovation (why invent/create if you won't get paid for it?) Well, some people do things for free (mostly lamers and 14 yr old european kids coding a crappy rip-off OS.

  2. Timed Copyrights by xSterbenx · · Score: 1, Troll
    I really don't know much about copyright law. However, I do know that when pharmaceutical create a new drug, the get a limited patent on it for a certain number of years, and then other companies can make generic versions of the drug. This is done so that the pharmaceutical company can recuperate some of its research spending to research the drug (and all drugs that didn't work, but still were researched), as well as make money (of course!).

    I don't see why a similar thing can't be done in general. A company makes something, and gets the full use and privacy of its item for a certain number of years. During this time it makes money and is happy. Then, after the time limit is up, everyone can then do what they want with it, take it apart, improve it, sell their idea, etc.

    True, big businesses would never go for this, because it would make much less powerful and much less money. But it sounds like a good idea, right?