Yeah, well I used to have a gf who claimed to be a Scientologist, and she gave over $40k to the church. She states that some alien is responsible for blowing up volcanos that created humans, but you know what... the bitch is just wrong.
People seem to forget that without copyright the GPL would be meaningless.
To quote my reply to someone else which addresses this exact point:
Without copyright, the GPL wouldn't even need to exist.
Without copyright there would be no restrictions against copying or modifying software in the first place. The GPL is a way to "fight copyright laws with copyrights". The day copyright laws have been abolished is the day the GPL has finally fulfilled its goals.
I think you have fundamentally missed the point of Free software. The idea is not just to make it possible for people to copy software for free (as in beer) but to make it possible for them to use it in any way they want and to modify it for their needs.
Actually, you are the one missing the point: Without copyright there would be no restrictions against modifying software in the first place. The GPL is a way to "fight copyright laws with copyrights". The day copyright laws have been abolished is the day the GPL has finally fulfilled its goals.
Without the GPL somebody could take your software that you want to be free and redistribute it in binary form only with some sort of copy protection...
They could, but what good would it do them? These actions are only meaningful in a situation where there are copyright laws in the first place. Even multimedia conglomerates with millions of dollars at their disposal cannot manage to create a copy protection scheme that is not trivially broken within weeks of its release. Without copyrights there would be no DMCA, and there would be no penalties for cracking the copy protection. Furthermore, no company would even bother spending millions on a copy protection scheme unless they had the weight of the law to back them up when someone cracked it. Take away copyrights, and copy protected software becomes history.
As for distributing a binary format: Source code leaks, and we have decompilers. The wealthiest and most powerful software company in the world had their entire operating system leaked, and a handful of motivated individuals with a few days to spare could reconstruct the source from any binary you throw at them. What is the point of hiding the source when people are just going to get their hands on it eventually anyway? Maybe you are forgetting that until the source is leaked or reconstructed people can just redistribute the binary!
Your comments and your reasonings show that you really haven't thought through all the implications of abolishing copyright.
My contribution to culture, however small, was done because I had the expectation of being able to trade that contribution for enough money to pay my rent, feed my kids, etc. If there was no expectation, you know what I would have done? Become a lawyer.
Ok, let's hear it... What have you done? The artwork on FunDraw? Listen, I have to blunt with you: The freedom that we would gain as a society by abandoning copyright is more important than your collection of clip-art.
Where do you get the idea that you are somehow entitled to profit from this silly diversion? And why on earth do you suppose that the rest of us give a damn? Just because you happen to be able to make money this way because doesn't magically justify the laws that enable it. So what if you couldn't make money off of it... Really, tell me: So what? Is the world going to fall to pieces? No, you'll just have to find some other way to make money. If my decision to fight for freedom from copyrights means gbulmash has to do something besides put clip-art on a website to make his way in the world, so be it. I can certainly live with this trade-off.
See, the laws of society are not meant for you. They are meant for society. That seems to be your big misconception about this whole affair. You may personally be worse off if copyrights were repealed, as will a handful of other people who are only in the creative arts for the money, but the rest of us -- who far outnumber you -- would be much better off.
I originally posted this without an account, but didn't want to see post get lost. So here it is as a non-AC:
Copyright is not an unjust law.
Yes, it is. Copyrights ware originally penned to last 25-30 years, and there were definitely no criminal penalties for individual violations. You might be able to argue that a copyright law does not have to be unjust, but today's copyright laws most certain are.
And without copyright, anyone could take a GPL'ed project, incorporate it into closed source products, and no one could say boo to them.
This is such a prevalent misconception. Without copyright, the GPL wouldn't even need to exist. The GPL was created as a retaliation against copyright. "Copyleft", get it... it's the opposite of copyright. If all copyright laws were abolished tomorrow there would be no more need for the GPL. The whole point of it is to fight back against the people who do want to prevent you from copying -- so they cannot just take your work, add a bunch of stuff to it, and then deny anyone from copying the composite work.
There are a lot of people who, if they didn't have copyright laws to protect their creations, wouldn't create them, either because those creations cost too much or simply because there was a more profitable use of their time. The dream of being rich and famous spurs a lot of artists...
You know, if public educators had somehow managed to twist the laws into their favor where they could become multimillionaires and set for life based on a few months work, maybe we'd have the same kind of competition amongst teachers. But we don't, and yet there are still educators. And for the importance of the the work they do, they get pretty crappy pay. They are certainly a whole lot more important to us as a society than someone who happens to be good at throwing a ball into a hole, but I don't imagine I'd see you rallying behind any laws that would, say, increase taxes by 100%, in order to ensure educators had some way to become rich and famous from their work. But that's exactly what copyrights do -- whether it's directly taking your money by taxes, or indirectly by granting monopolistic copyright laws.
You're a fringe ideologue who probably creates nothing and is only looking for an excuse to commit intellectual gluttony on someone else's dime.
It probably doesn't need repeating, but... GPL and BSD... They refute every single argument you've made.
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Yeah, well I used to have a gf who claimed to be a Scientologist, and she gave over $40k to the church. She states that some alien is responsible for blowing up volcanos that created humans, but you know what... the bitch is just wrong.
People seem to forget that without copyright the GPL would be meaningless.
To quote my reply to someone else which addresses this exact point:
Without copyright, the GPL wouldn't even need to exist.
Without copyright there would be no restrictions against copying or modifying software in the first place. The GPL is a way to "fight copyright laws with copyrights". The day copyright laws have been abolished is the day the GPL has finally fulfilled its goals.
I think you have fundamentally missed the point of Free software. The idea is not just to make it possible for people to copy software for free (as in beer) but to make it possible for them to use it in any way they want and to modify it for their needs.
Actually, you are the one missing the point: Without copyright there would be no restrictions against modifying software in the first place. The GPL is a way to "fight copyright laws with copyrights". The day copyright laws have been abolished is the day the GPL has finally fulfilled its goals.
Without the GPL somebody could take your software that you want to be free and redistribute it in binary form only with some sort of copy protection...
They could, but what good would it do them? These actions are only meaningful in a situation where there are copyright laws in the first place. Even multimedia conglomerates with millions of dollars at their disposal cannot manage to create a copy protection scheme that is not trivially broken within weeks of its release. Without copyrights there would be no DMCA, and there would be no penalties for cracking the copy protection. Furthermore, no company would even bother spending millions on a copy protection scheme unless they had the weight of the law to back them up when someone cracked it. Take away copyrights, and copy protected software becomes history.
As for distributing a binary format: Source code leaks, and we have decompilers. The wealthiest and most powerful software company in the world had their entire operating system leaked, and a handful of motivated individuals with a few days to spare could reconstruct the source from any binary you throw at them. What is the point of hiding the source when people are just going to get their hands on it eventually anyway? Maybe you are forgetting that until the source is leaked or reconstructed people can just redistribute the binary!
Your comments and your reasonings show that you really haven't thought through all the implications of abolishing copyright.
My contribution to culture, however small, was done because I had the expectation of being able to trade that contribution for enough money to pay my rent, feed my kids, etc. If there was no expectation, you know what I would have done? Become a lawyer.
Ok, let's hear it... What have you done? The artwork on FunDraw? Listen, I have to blunt with you: The freedom that we would gain as a society by abandoning copyright is more important than your collection of clip-art.
Where do you get the idea that you are somehow entitled to profit from this silly diversion? And why on earth do you suppose that the rest of us give a damn? Just because you happen to be able to make money this way because doesn't magically justify the laws that enable it. So what if you couldn't make money off of it... Really, tell me: So what? Is the world going to fall to pieces? No, you'll just have to find some other way to make money. If my decision to fight for freedom from copyrights means gbulmash has to do something besides put clip-art on a website to make his way in the world, so be it. I can certainly live with this trade-off.
See, the laws of society are not meant for you. They are meant for society. That seems to be your big misconception about this whole affair. You may personally be worse off if copyrights were repealed, as will a handful of other people who are only in the creative arts for the money, but the rest of us -- who far outnumber you -- would be much better off.
I originally posted this without an account, but didn't want to see post get lost. So here it is as a non-AC:
Copyright is not an unjust law.
Yes, it is. Copyrights ware originally penned to last 25-30 years, and there were definitely no criminal penalties for individual violations. You might be able to argue that a copyright law does not have to be unjust, but today's copyright laws most certain are.
And without copyright, anyone could take a GPL'ed project, incorporate it into closed source products, and no one could say boo to them.
This is such a prevalent misconception. Without copyright, the GPL wouldn't even need to exist. The GPL was created as a retaliation against copyright. "Copyleft", get it... it's the opposite of copyright. If all copyright laws were abolished tomorrow there would be no more need for the GPL. The whole point of it is to fight back against the people who do want to prevent you from copying -- so they cannot just take your work, add a bunch of stuff to it, and then deny anyone from copying the composite work.
There are a lot of people who, if they didn't have copyright laws to protect their creations, wouldn't create them, either because those creations cost too much or simply because there was a more profitable use of their time. The dream of being rich and famous spurs a lot of artists...
You know, if public educators had somehow managed to twist the laws into their favor where they could become multimillionaires and set for life based on a few months work, maybe we'd have the same kind of competition amongst teachers. But we don't, and yet there are still educators. And for the importance of the the work they do, they get pretty crappy pay. They are certainly a whole lot more important to us as a society than someone who happens to be good at throwing a ball into a hole, but I don't imagine I'd see you rallying behind any laws that would, say, increase taxes by 100%, in order to ensure educators had some way to become rich and famous from their work. But that's exactly what copyrights do -- whether it's directly taking your money by taxes, or indirectly by granting monopolistic copyright laws.
You're a fringe ideologue who probably creates nothing and is only looking for an excuse to commit intellectual gluttony on someone else's dime.
It probably doesn't need repeating, but... GPL and BSD... They refute every single argument you've made.