Debian DPL Threatens to Leave SPI Over Sun Java

An anonymous reader writes "A three-week-long flame war in debian-devel over the new Java Distribution License has culminated in Anthony Towns, the newly elected Debian Project Lead, offering to separate Debian from its legal representative, SPI. This came as a response to SPI member John Goerzen's objections to the Debian project's interaction with Sun's legal team around the new JDL license without review from SPI's lawyers."

Comments

A lot of nerve

[stymyx]

If SPI is Debian's legal representative, it is perfectly reasonable for them to expect to be consulted about potentially problematic legal actions taken by Debian, let alone to simply be informed when such actions take place.

SPI wasn't trying to take the place of Debian's "governing body", it was simply trying to act as their legal representative.

Re:A lot of nerve

[NormalVisual]

That's what it looked like to me also. Towns is getting worked up about a perceived control issue from SPI, but if SPI is the one that is going have to foot the bill for defending Debian's actions, it's quite understandable for them to be concerned about the licensing issues brought about by including a package in a distribution.

From the thread: "...if SPI are not willing to endorse the standard methods by which Debian operates -- having the archive administrators review licenses of new packages -- and the standard methods by which Debian reviews decisions -- public discussion with the original decision makers empowered to change their minds, and overview by the technical committee and the developers as a whole by general resolution, then we need to change Debian's relationship with SPI so that is not an issue."

This sounds to me like a fairly dangerous way to operate, unless the archive admins or others in the chain are qualified attorneys, and if Debian is effectively committing SPI to questionable legal obligations without consulting with them first, then SPI would be fools for not trying to get a handle on that. Resolving things technically is one thing, but playing fast and loose with licensing is a good way to find yourself on the wrong end of a lawsuit. Towns is coming off looking like a petulant child, IMHO.

Re:A lot of nerve

[metacosm]

As a "legal representative" -- you serve your client. While SPI may have preferred to be in the loop sooner, they can't "expect" or "demand" it. They are supposed to assist Debian. If Debian (as a body) chooses not to seek assistance / advice -- so be it!

The intelligence of the decision made by the Project Lead (Anthony Towns) is debatable. His control should not be -- and I think the primary point of his response was to clear up any "confusion" about SPI's power/control. When you are forced to have constant interaction with a group of lawyers *shiver*, I think a hard slap in the face is often needed to stop them from naturally trying to move more and more decision into the "legal domain" where they can apply pressure/control.

Honestly, this doesn't seem terribly dramatic to me, it just a gentle reminder to people that he is the decision maker, and SPI is replaceable. Hopefully, SPI will work in a more supportive, as compared to combative roll in the future, as they should be.

Re:A lot of nerve

[dnoyeb]

Funny. I had this same argument over the eclipse license. The license makes things unclear. Which normally is not unacceptable for a legal document. Yet compared with the GPL and LGPL that make things clear, it then makes the EPL clear that things omitted are NOT included.

The argument against mine was that the FAQ clarified this, which I found laughable. Seems like Sun is not the only one trying to pull this stunt.

My main problem is that a vague license means the entity with the best lawyers has a huge advantage. So big companies like Sun or IBM couldn't care less. I don't think its a coincidence that the GPL/LGPL are much less vague given their objective and who they are intended to protect.

Re:A lot of nerve

[Bob9113]

If SPI is Debian's legal representative, it is perfectly reasonable for them to expect to be consulted about potentially problematic legal actions taken by Debian, let alone to simply be informed when such actions take place.

SPI wasn't trying to take the place of Debian's "governing body", it was simply trying to act as their legal representative.

I concur - and I think the right thing to do now is to relax. Take a step back and take a deep breath. Then ask, "Does the SPI help Debian? Is SPI benefitted by it's association with Debian?" I think the answer to both questions is yes.

So the next step is to recognize that this is something that happened in the past. It's over now. Learn from it. Come up with some guidelines for how to act in the future. Talk about the roles that each partner ought to play and the authority that each partner should have.

Don't get distracted with "You should not have done this." That is accusatory. The DPL didn't do it to piss off SPI, nor because he doesn't have respect for SPI. He did it because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. And that was a reasonable judgement call for him to make at the time and in context. How do I know that? Because he's not stupid and I sincerely doubt he's a dick.

So SPI would like to provide further explanation of, or expand, its role for Debian. OK, cool. So do that now. Figure out what the guidelines will be going forward. Learn from it and move on.

WTF?

[dotslashdot]

On the one hand, it's nice to see a fundamentalist Linux distribution like Debian standing up on principle against encroachment of commercialization. On the other hand, non-fundamentalists like the rest of us are puzzled at how much time the Debian team wastes in throwing tantrums over license purity instead of shipping their next version. I guess I'm not a target user of their system since I just want Java to work on my system without being strip searched and violated.

Re:WTF?

[/ASCII]

You mean unlike the non-fundamentalist distros like Fedora, Gentoo and Ubunto who have decided thatSUNs Java is not free enough to distribute and hence won't do it at all?

Re:WTF?

[joostje]

I guess I'm not a target user of their system since I just want Java to work on my system without being strip searched and violated.

Of cource, that's the reason Debian is arguing: to ensure that *you* can use the distribution without being strip searched. The sun java licenses do have some strange clauses.

Re:WTF?

[Antique Geekmeister]

You are a target user of the software authors, such as Sun in this case. Debian is, correctly, noticing that the licensing of Sun does not permit them to distribute software they way they normally do it, with intact and compilable source and automatic compilation as needed.

These are not small matters: supporting such packages is a security and software management problem for Debian and other distributions, who often haven't included the Java packages for exactly this reason. Fedora Core 5, for example, seems to have discarded the jdk and jre (or whatever they're called this week) that they included in older OS releases. And Sun has been doing weirdness like slapping their installable RPM inside an executable binary, then renaming the basic packages, then insisiting on jumping through licensing agreement hoops simply to download the software. It's not appropriate in Linux or other open source systems, and is a compelling reason for extensive development of genuinely open source Java software, such as the gcc/Java projects.

Sun is duplicating, badly, what Adobe attempted to do with Postscript in creating a "public" but heavily licensed standard that only they can control the standards for. It's understandable, but is helping actually sideline Sun's particular Java version in favor of more robust ones such as IBM's, and fostering the same sort of open source replacement that ghostscript became for Postscript, and with gaining popularity of the open source version to the point where Sun will want to come up with a new software to license, much as Adobe is dumping Postscript and proceeding to PDF wherever feasible.

Re:WTF?

[metamatic]

And the irony is, by forcing the open source community to develop GCJ-based Java solutions, they're destroying the supposed raison d'etre of Java, to be able to take the same binary and run it anywhere.

Thank God for Debian

[XanC]

First, without Debian, Ubuntu would be nothing. More importantly, as long as Debian exists, we know that we have access to an unencumbered, workable, and complete operating system / userspace. Should everything else hit the fan, we know there's still Debian.

Plus, stable's great for servers.

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[drsmithy]

The upcoming Ubuntu distribution is threatening to replace Debian as the leading distribution.

Er, leading distribution of what ?

Re:Debian is violating Sun's licensing is the issu

[Umbral Blot]

They should hire you to write the summaries instead.

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[ndogg]

It matters to the ideologues to set forth the definitions of Open Source. It matters to the people to called their OS Debian GNU/Linux rather than just Linux. It matters to the people who continue to call their OS Debian GNU/Linux.

Ideology may not be practical, but practicality without ideology has no direction.

Where would OpenBSD be without the likes of Theo de Raadt?
Where would open source be without the FSF?

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[mverwijs]

I've simply got tired of all this ideologic stuff.

Folks, this is coming from a guy who wrote:
Just imagine that if every application and every game were coded cross-platform everybody just could go into any shop and buy any computer they like.

Tired of ideologic stuff indeed.

What??

[mr_tenor]

Ideologic war?

A small group of people has, it seems, in secret put Debian into a very dangerous legal position, without consulting the people who have the relevent legal expertise.

Including java without discussion was stupid

[Error27]

It's pretty obvious that discussing java's license was going to be slow and painful and so it's also obviously why people would want to short circuit the whole process. But once you think about it for 5 seconds that's a really stupid plan. People are still going to discuss it but now they're going to be more pissed off.

Also this email is stupid. Debian needs SPI and when people start suggesting otherwise that means they are taking a vacation in retardo-land.

Here's the other thing. When I heard Debian had included java into their distro, I was like, "Wow. That must be a really improved license. Debian doesn't just include any old license into the distro." But a week later, I learned that 3 debian leaders had rammed java through without any discussion and really the license was very questionable. Debian is basically going off the informal Sun FAQ when they included. Does anyone even know that the FAQ was written by a lawyer or was it written by an intern in the PR dept?

Re:Including java without discussion was stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that's easy to say. From Sun's perspective though they spent more than 5 years and ridiculous amounts in legal fees trying to get an agreement that everyone was happy with. They never claimed that new the license was the end of the process, but they did say (rightly) that it was a significant step forward and that it had the support of some Linux distrots, including Debian. As someone who writes a lot of code in Java and deploys a lot of it on Linux (as well as Solaris, AIX, and even occasionally Windows), I'd be delighted if my Linux customers didn't have such a hard time installing Java since I think it holds back adoption of Linux in the datacentre.

yur a retard

[Error27]

You have to make nice to anyone doing you a favor for free, that includes lawyers.

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[Anonymous Coward]

There are two types of OSS developers out there:

• the Linus type "have fun and cooperate" and
• the RMS type "OSS is religion"

You are right. And, when it comes to legal matters, the nitpicking RMS approach wins.

For example, GNU have been requiring paper trails for copyright contributions for decades. Linus didn't bother doing that with Linux, and left Linux wide open to SCO's stupid lawsuit. Guess what? He learned his lesson and requires a paper trail for contributions now.

Or how about another example? Remember when Linus first switched to BitKeeper? How RMS said it wasn't a good idea because he'd be left vulnerable to the whims of Larry McVoy? How did that one turn out again? Oh yeah, RMS, in his pedantic glory, was right again, Larry McVoy got shirty and revoked permission to use BitKeeper, which ended up with Linus wasting time writing his own version control toolset.

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[Tom]

As much as I dislike these legal discussions, I see the point. Debian is a kind of afraid of all the DRM, IP lawsuit, patent law and other bullshit and tries to stear well clear of it. Debian people realize that these things don't hit you in isolated spots - they're like dum-dum bullets, they expand inside the body.

Look at SCO or any patent claim. There's maybe 1% or less of your code that is possibly in violation of someone else's thing. And yet it threatens your entire product.

The following scenario is unlikely - but if it ever does come to pass, we will all thank whatever gods we believe in for Debian to be there and for having been as strict as they are:

Imagine MS or possibly a small group of likewise evil, selfish companies whose only way of "winning" in the marketplace is to destroy their opponents. Imagine them banding together and using a combination of software patents, DRM and DMCA lawsuits and a couple copyright disputes to drag Linux into an endless legal battle. Imagine that different from the SCO they can somehow construct a case that at least appears solid enough to a judge that Redhat and SuSE and whoever you have get slapped with a preliminary injunction. Maybe it's just 2 packages that are a problem, but the judge orders a stop to the distribution until the entire thing can be resolved. You don't think MS would have much haste in getting it resolved, would you?

This or any other scenario like it wouldn't mean the end of Linux - you'd still be able to get your copy from some FTP in Sweden or China, but it would bring Linux progress into the enterprise market to a halt.
Unless there is a Debian that can point to documentation and lawyer papers and to the fact that they always acted with so much dilligence that it is very certain none of their stuff ever got tainted.

Re:not really

[halfcuban]

I'm sure that open source is an ideal to you, but to most people it is not. It is software, and it is a business model to me and many others. It isn't inherently political to use it, and it's annoying when people try to drag the rest of us into their political battles.

No one's dragging you into anything. I'm tired of everytime someone states their support for the ideals of OSS and the general concept of copyleft, DRM-less, etc etc styled licensing, that everyone starts getting their panties in a bunch that someone else is dragging them into some sort of political battle. No one's holding a gun to your head and making you donate to the FSF or the Xiph Foundation.

What the parent says is true, however. The ideals are political things even if the software, in and of itself, isn't, or its potential uses (Linux can be used to host pirate movie servers just as easily as a Naval computer for missle targetting) are all over the map. The concepts Debian as a distro expounds upon are distinctly in favor of those said political ideas, and most people who choose Debian as a distro also share it.

Personally, as much as I use and love some open source software, I think that it is a good thing that developers have the freedom to release their software under whatever licensing they want, including a closed source one. I don't even think it would be a good thing if all software was open source. I think that closed source development is an important business model for many people.

The parent is not suggesting that at all, and you're setting up a straw man argument, not unlike whats his name who sued the FSF, that OSS is somehow out to artificially rig the game by forcing all software to be free/open source/or under some sort of GNU public license.

Buying software

[Roger W Moore]

So how many people consult their lawyer about the software license before purchasing/downloading the software? This seems to be a similar situation to me. It might have been wise to consult them but the tone of the SPI email should have been "it might be a good idea to talk to us about these sort of things since we are here to help you" and not "how dare you make a decision before you talked to us first". Lawyers are supposed to be their to help you with legal advice not to run your life for you...although it seems that many want to which is probably why so many end up in politics!

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[killjoe]

Yes it's very important to remember that.

1) People who disagree with you are zealots. Only zealots can possibly disagree with your obviously rational and well thought out opinions.
2) People who hold other values then you are doing it because they think it's a religion. You (and the people who agree with you 100%) are the only rational people on the planet.

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[Anonymous Coward]

All distros scratch an itch. Debian's job is to keep it pure. If they fail to do that they become just another distro in a sea of 400 and the community looses it's only 100% non-commercial major distro.

And debian practically invented the "OSS religion" btw; Debian's free software guidelines became OSI's Open Source definition.

Well that explains that.

[mpcooke3]

I had wondered how debian could possibly agree to include that software in non-free with those license conditions.

see: http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=186539&c id=15398000

I guess they "forgot" to check with the lawyers...

It feels that DD and Debian-legal is out of sync

[Pecisk]

Let's be honest - most developers don't give a white sh@$#%t about what clauses and doubtful legal situations can arise of use of software, so Debian-legal thoughts are usually have been taken with lot of anger and confusion. Devs just want to work with software and apps, but D-L is full of idealists and clever individuals in legal field, who see things quite differently (and it is NOTHING bad about that), and so conflict is in full force.

But in this case, I *think* it is totally overblown and feels like that Debian-legal just want to say big f12#$%k off to Java usage in Debian - non-legal arguments like "I don't use non-free", "there are ALMOST working free software implementation in main", etc says almost everything about discusssion - it is not about LEGAL situation, but about fears that if Java will be aviable in non-free and will be supported by DD, CLASSPATH and other Java projects will slowly loose momentum they achieved so far now (Again, it is just my thougts after reading almost half of thread).

I can understand both sides, but thinking "We will get free implementation, we don't need stinkin Sun official implementation" sounds like too much dreaming. Let's be honest - it is simply not possible. Oracle won't use CLASSPATH, they will insist to use JRE. Other software will too. Yes, there will be desktop apps which will run on Free Software versions just fine - like Eclipse, lot of different small aps, but for enterprise it will be big NO-NO.

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[Kjella]

Great to see that the Debian developers start to break free from the strangulation of debian-legal and their overly religious OSS zealotry. It is usually debian-legal who pretends to act "in the name of the user" whereas the opposite is true and explains in large parts the success of Ubuntu.

The reason that Ubuntu has success on the desktop is that they're trying to be exactly what Debian is not - Debian on the desktop. Almost nothing about Debian is desktop-oriented... "unstable, testing, stable" "hmm, I want a stable desktop, what do I choose? stable?" "oh sorry that's old super-stable packages for 24/7 servers, use testing". The whole release cycle is based around a server OS, 18 months is too long for a desktop and there's no "point releases" matching a desktop. Being on testing is a rollercoaster with tons of changes right after a release, and glazier slow before a release.

Ubuntu is doing this perfectly correct for a desktop system - the releases match the Gnome releases, meaning every new version brings "the latest and greatest" and some new eyecandy. The last Debian stable doesn't even have a splash screen, as far as I can tell. You can't really claim it's a compatibility issue when it's set up to boot into X anyway. From what I've understood, the last Ubuntu as of breezy will also recognize my widescreen properly, something Debian does not (but I did it myself instead).

I mean, none of these are really big issues, but they've marketed themselves completely different. Plus a few cheap marketing stunts like changing from orange to brown default theme. Seriously, does it matter? It does get press, forum talk and of course a new round of screenshots though. I wonder what slashdot would say if the new "feature" of WMP11 was a new skin... Or something as trivial as comparing Debian's and Ubuntu's homepages, which looks most like a "for geeks" server OS with no pictures and a really square layout? (yes, this is a leading question)

Let me give you a typical language example:
Debian: "Debian GNU/Linux provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 15490 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine."
Ubuntu: "Ubuntu is a complete Linux-based operating system, (...) Ubuntu includes more than 16,000 pieces of software,"

Most people wouldn't know what a "pure OS" is if you beat them with a stick, Ubuntu simply smooths over the details and says "whatever you understand by operating system, Ubuntu has it all". Debian spends a full sentence introducing the concept package, which it explains using words like "precompiled" where 99% of normal computer users who've never touched a compiler has fallen off already.

I could go on all day but there's no point. Ubuntu acts and communicates better in relation to desktop users than Debian does, and it's absolutely no surprise to me that Ubuntu is a success. Debian has this great potential but there nobody seems to be "trying", if you understand what I mean.

Re:Hmm, yes...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I love Debian, and I love Free software, but sometimes a
      guy just wants to run Java."

I don't get it, I run Debian stable and I have java, just had to go the sun site and download it. Which, BTW, is the exact same thing I had to do for my moms' Windows box.

Re:It feels that DD and Debian-legal is out of syn

[Svartalf]

Here's a hint:

      A lawyer should be consulted on a license- NOT a developer. It's a legal matter, not a coding matter.

There's a legal gotcha on the Java license that SPI, being the legal interface for the Debian
project, that if things go wrong, they'd have to absorb and deal with. Without SPI, each of
the devs involved with the project would be held individually liable for potentially millions
of dollars each (And that is exactly what is possible with the new licensing from Sun on Java).

Do you now see WHY devs shouldn't be the final call on a license?

Your attorney does not control you.

[Distan]

Maybe (probably) I'm missing some subtlety specific to Debian/SPI, but when I compare this situation to what I encounter in my professional life, it appears that SPI is in the wrong.

I work for a corporation. In my position, I frequently negotiate deals with software vendors, and this includes negotiating the contract terms. I am not a lawyer, however, so I work with our corporate attorneys in negotiating these contracts. They are responsible for understanding and explaining the legal ramifications of the contract terms, and I am responsible for understanding and explaining the business objectives of why we are trying to license the software.

Indemnification in particular is often a sticky subject in these negotiations. We usually get the indemnification clause that makes our lawyers happy, but in rare cases we do not.

In the end, however, it is notthe lawyer's job to decide whether or not we accept the terms of any contract. It is their job to advise me (and my managers) what risk we are taking with any given contract. It is then up to management to decide of that risk outweighs the business benefits we are trying to seek.

If somehow the Debian developers have gotten themselves in the position of needing permission from their attorney to sign a contract, then something has gotten seriously screwed up in their relationship. That would be like the CEO of McDonalds needing permission from some random fry cook to enter into a legal agreement. The attorney is to be an advisor, not a decision maker.

Re:Your attorney does not control you.

[James McP]

Debian is a *project* not an entity or person. Projects cannot be held legally accountable or own things.

SPI is not a legal firm full of lawyers. SPI is a corporation that provides the legal entity that can own property & purchase services for the Debian developers. SPI is the entity that OWNS the name "Debian", the servers the files are hosted on, and that contracts the attorneys that protect Debian developers. (Without knowing the twisty history, I wouldn't be surprised if Debian wasn't the project that caused SPI to be created.)

In human terms, SPI is Debian's legal guardian. SPI is legally responsible for Debian's debts, obligations, and will be the one against the wall if Debian does something bad. However Debian admins can agree to legal terms and contracts which put SPI on the spot.

I quote one of the posts: SPI projects shouldn't be taking advice from Sun's attorneys. We should be taking advice from SPI's attorneys.

In other words: "don't take legal advice from the attorneys who may be suing you tomorrow, especially when those attorneys may be suing you, me, and two dozen other people in the process."

Darn good advice.

Re:not really

[ClamIAm]

Nearly any time there is a choice between different things, one's choices are political. When you buy something, you are in effect giving support to its production. The same is true for software, even if you aren't "buying" it.

Re:not really

[bfree]

You espouse the political ideals as your own yet claim that your should not be dragged in to them. The very idea that a programmer could choose to distribute Free Software is in political danger (dmca/eucd, idea patents) and non-free software is being threatened at a political level (government purchasing rules primarily). If you

think it is a good thing that developers have the freedom to release their software under whatever licensing they want

then you should consider how your vote might change the future of these "business models".

In most areas of politics there are no Free Software implications. In fact never forget that things like the Debian Free Software Guidelines make absolutely explicit that the community can never try to cut out any group of people, even terrorists. Free Software is free for all whatever your political ideals, but do not think that this means Free Software is not political, it just limits it's politics to a few key areas which are required for it's continued existence.

Re:That's the error of this argument.

[Jason Earl]

I've witnessed my share of Free Software projects that fork over control issues, and it is never a pretty sight. Most projects never really recover. A fork of Debian would be especially problematic because quite a few Debian developers are the sort of license purists that would remove GFDL documentation from the distribution because it isn't free enough. So a splinter-Debian would not only have to come up with new infrastructure, a new name, new ftp sites, and all of the rest of the stuff that makes Debian GNU/Linux work, but it would also have to convince enough developers that the new splinter-Debian is the new "real" Debian.

Quite frankly, I lurk on the debian-devel and debian-legal lists and I don't think that there are enough people that care enough about including Sun's Java in non-free to make that happen. I think that it would be possible to create yet another splinter of Debian (a la Ubuntu) that borrows heavily from Debian and includes a few extra packages, but I would be very surprised if a splinter would ever become more than just another package repository that tracked stable and testing.

Re:not really

[darthwader]

Upon re-reading the post, I think I'm being sucked in by a troll. But since I've put so much effort (almost 10 minutes) into writing my reply, I'll post it anyway:

With all due respect, that's a load of crap.

Before white people and black people walked on the same land, one clan of white people killed and enslaved another group of white people in one land, and one tribe of black people killed and enslaved another tribe of black people in a different land. Race (or tribe, family, clan, gender) discrimination has existed for as long as there have been people and weapons that people could use on each other.

Before computers existed, there was copyright law, because people who made a living creating "intellectual property" had a right to control how the fruits of their mental labour were distributed, in order to ensure that they could benefit from their work.

Why should you have the right to enjoy? If I put a year's work into creating a beautiful garden, why should you automatically have the right to enjoy it? If I want to charge $10 per head admission, what's wrong with that? I deserve to be rewarded for my effort in creating the garden that you are enjoying.

Why should you have the right to inspect or study? If I spend years of my life trying to solve a problem, and during that year I manage to create a solution that nobody else has thought of, why should you get the benefit of that? Why can't I ask (or require) you to pay me to use that solution which I have worked so hard to create? And the only way I can be sure that people are fairly paying me for the use of my solution is for me to keep it secret.

Why should you have the right to share? That's got to be the silliest "right" I've heard of. If I spend a year of my time creating something, I'd like to be rewarded for that year of effort. Ideally, I'd like to be rewarded somewhere around $100,000 for that year of my life. I could try to sell one copy of my work for $100,000, but nobody wants it that much. So I want to sell 10,000 copies for $10. That way, I get rewarded, and 6000 people get to benefit from my work. Everyone's happy. But if you pay $10 for my work and then "share" it with the 9999 other people, I only get $10 for a year's work. That's good for your and your friends, but not good for me.

We live in a society where we exchange "money" for "things of value". As long as software is a "thing of value", people have a right to want to have "money" exchanged for it.

Re:Not nerve, naivite

[myowntrueself]

You're not supposed to protect yourself with legal fictions.

Like the notion of 'intellectual property' for example...

Re:not really

[swillden]

Before computers existed, there was copyright law, because people who made a living creating "intellectual property" had a right to control how the fruits of their mental labour were distributed, in order to ensure that they could benefit from their work.

Stop right here, because the rest of your post is based on this assumption, and it's wrong.

Modern copyright (I use the adjective "modern" to distinguish it from the original formulation of copyright, whose primary purpose was censorship by the British Crown) was not created because people have any implicit or explicit right to benefit financially from their intellectual creations. In fact, the reason we have copyright law today is because enlightened government leaders felt that the *public* has a right to benefit culturally and intellectually from the work of authors, painters, composers, etc.

Let me say that again: The purpose of copyright law is to benefit the public, not the copyright holder.

The reason society invests in granting and enforcing the inherently artificial monopoly that is copyright is to ensure that creations are distributed far and wide, so that they can spark other creations and enrich the public domain. Any benefits that accrue to the creator are incidental. All human intellectual creations are presumed to ultimately belong to the entire human race, which is why copyrights must expire and why the granted monopoly is full of holes (fair use, compulsory licensing, etc.).

That's the theory underlying US copyright law. The fact that the law on the books no longer reflects the theory very well is a problem we need to fix, not reinforce.