This view is almost always espoused by people who don't actually create anything that has value.....
On the contrary, your view is espoused only by creators who create things of little value, and then expect some glorious all reaching monopoly in return. The mathematician who coppies a math book and adds one or two of their own personal formulas gives society far more value than half the madonna's on the planet.
More than they would have had? Says who? The market determines the value of IP, and that's the way it should stay....
Even more bull. Markets are set by natural limits in supply and demand. Information has almost no natural limits in supply, but people do - and copyright law completely ignores this, and so does this agrument. It's a market regulation. get it.
I agree with you. And he then goes on to say "Disobedience makes sense when you are saying there should be no regulation of the kind you attack", and talks about Martin Luther King.
However, someone should point out to him that the problems with MLK started out several hundred years before with indentured servitude. Being short term, for blacks or for whites, and a method for gaining new property in the Americas - it sounded very reasonable. It is only after we learnt the long term consequences that we see how evil it is.
The same is true with copyrights. The consequences of copyrights are becomming all to clear. In this context, they should be opposed all together and civil disobediance makes perfict sense.
In the 1850's, even many of the factory leaders in the north supported laws that contained slavery to the south, and exported them back from the north. But no matter what happened the factory model of business was incompatable with the plantation model. With factories, a mobile workforce was essential - but with plantations it was a nightmare. Having a society that was compatable with both was going to be impossible.
All these people were rich business men, had close relations, and a lot of cross investment. However, inspite of all the things that bound them together - the forces that tore them apart were even greater. Today this manifests itself in the Content model and the Tech model. The content model can not be successfull without placing significant profit limitations on the tech model or visa versa. Contention will boil over until we finally decide that copyrights are bad and rid ourselves of them.
Moral, don't be one of those poor fools who thought that the slave states could peacefully get along with the free states. Those people just didn't get it.
It seems like law enforcemnet has a bad habit of picking fights that they can never win. The war on drugs is a great example, prohibition was another.
However, like most federal overeach, there is also beneficial side effects (to them). For example, the war on drugs helps the govt collect trillions in taxes that it would not have otherwise. Not from drug lords, but from legit busisnessmen who are fear mongered into not using the same tax protections associated with drug lords.
There is likely a similar agenda with copyright enforcement. It likely has little to do with copyrights, but the fact that the same methods used for copyright enforcement can also sacre legit businessmen from peer to peer technologies.
Anyone have experience with something like a Nevada corporation? I hear that it provides alot of advantages, because Nevada has no corporate income tax, and because they have strict privacy laws so you can limit your liability by makeing it extremely difficult to prove you're the real owner of the corporation. If you can do the bulk of your contracting work on your laptop while you visit Vegas, then it could be a huge advantage tax wise.
I also hear that they and florida are the only states that won't share tax information with the IRS. Anyone have experience with this?
I wish people would renember how many time's we've all been screwed over by someone who seeminly out of generosity makes something free, or very easy to distribute - and then when we really need it they ream the screws to us like there's no tommorow. I can't see how anybody could blame Debian for wanting to be proactive just this once.
From my readings here, a lot of people don't understand the 1st
Amendment. Technically, it doesn't say you have the freedom of
speech/press/etc... - rather it says that the congress shall
pass no law to abridge these. This wording is *extremely*
important because the former implies that rights are given by
government, where the later implies that they exist above government
and the law forbids the government from trespassing on them.
The 2nd amendment is worded like this too.
By offering my software up for the taking the software thieves are, at least some of the time, depriving me of a sale, so yes, they are depriving me of something.
Also, there are things other than personal agreements that people in a modern society are expected to adhere to, for example, laws. In this case, the copyright laws.
That's the problem, this has nothing to do with the right to controll your work, it has to do with the "right" to controll market share. But that is not a right, and every other company in America has to deal with it.
You are correct about the law, but there is another law in the US called the Bill of Rights.
In the information age, copying and free expression are becomming inseperable, you can't deny this without being left behind and you
can't accept this without choosing between loosing copyrights or loosing freedom of speech.
Checkmate!
- Commerce is all about *consent*. Consent involves an exchange acceptable to both sides, not just the consumer.
I'm glad you mentioned that! Because it is about concent, and nobody forces you to write something and release it to anyone, but once it leaves your hand and you wish to restrict everyone elses hand, then it is about coercion. These people have made no personal agreement with you, they have not deprived you of your original copy or anything else.
It's your right to offer software with no restrictions. It's also your right -- or mine -- to offer software with conditions, and the user gets to decide whether he'll accept the software, and along with them the restrictions (within certain limits, such as you can't request somebody's firstborn as a slave).
I'm glad you mentioned slave here, because that argument sounds very familiar to the one - if you don't like slavery, then don't own slaves and shut up. It too was bull because slavery too by it's nature coerced on everyone.
The entire foundation and justification of Marxist thought is laid on the foundation that some set of "enlightened" individuals have the right to make decisions for those who are "not" in whatever field it may be. It has absouletely no sembalence of individual (inaliable) rights that exist above the system and must be respected whenever possible.
It is very dishonest, and exact opposite of open source. The GPL specifically is about me making decisions about code and information in my posession, and those who I interact with that noone else can impose on me wether "enlightened" or not.
When people talk about the freedom to copy, it is not like the false freedom for me to move into your house or impose on your resources. One is an infinite resource, the other very limited. Making them like they're the same is simply dishonest, and then going a step further and equating it to Marxisim (which promotes the latter) is even more dishonest.
Nope, that's been the case for much of history. In fact that's why copyright was originally invented.. So that the author (artist) himmself could control distribution of his works rather than being ripped of by a pirates, fakes, and imitators. It's also worth considering that most works of art are created for money. Read a bio of Leonardo Da Vinci sometime and see how often he jumped ship to someone who would pay better.
You keep saying that, and it keeps remaining just as wrong. Copyrights were created only to get information into the public domain, and fakes and immitations are less likely when you can freely copy a work rather more likely. There's a *reason* why copyrights have an expiration date - and it's not for the creators.
And what is this about pay? Ford is also mitovated by money, but if they have no incentive to create cars as long as GM can make them too - then tough shit.
PS piracy is where thugs board a ship, kill people, and deprive them of their property. To compare this to illegal copying is crude, and noone is proposing that authors be deprived of a copy of their work too.
Which is why OSS has not made the inroads it's proponents hope for. Most computer users, while not naive, are not programmers. They don't want/have the time to unravel the program in order to use it.
WHAT! most car users are not mechanics, but only an idiot would want to buy a car with the hood welded shut. The same is true with software, if it's not open source you are giving up controll and setting yourself up to get nailed.
No. Copyrights and patents were (originally) demanded by inventors, artists, and authors so that they might enjoy the fruit of their works free of pirates, and go on to produce more works. By the 17-1800's almost all goverments realized that protecting the people who produce their economic and intellectual gold was a Good Thing, this protection created jobs and engendered trade and economic prosperity.
BZZT WRONG! Just the opposite,
copyrights were created as a reward for publishers not to say bad things about the King. In order to fight this censorship, US copyrights were intentionally made available to everybody, to have an expiration date, and allow heavially for fair use. "Protection" and demands of creators have little to do with it - getting information into the public domain was the only goal. Prople who treat copyrights like property ruin this for everybody, and can only lead us to a DMCA like police state.
Huh? What kind of crack pipe are you smoking? Have you ever worked on a large software project?
Yep, the bulk of the costs are not writing code. In fact a good half the project is spent collecting requirements and formulating specifications from those.
But that's an aspect of development.
So is testing, so is distribution, etc.
Collecting requirements, formulation specs, testing, and especially distribution are areas that are by definition limited to the confines of one corporate orginisation in a closed product. Free software DRASTICLY increases the span of people who can contribute to all of these, and projects like Linux are renound for being excellent at all of these.
To understand open source, you half to understand that copyrights ard patents are not free market, but government monopolies that artificially manipulate the market.
In order to get arround the damage this causes, an established and well founded University system is required to get information and knowledge out into the open.
Now the GPL and internet are changing this and
making it so that people can actually learn, share, and apply knowledge in the free market way it was always intended to be.
America's rich because it's free, not because it's a bully. I myself am more interested in maintaining my rights then getting along. I don't think Americans can expect the US to stick a bag over it's head while external sovriegnties put the screws to us. ESPECIALLY the WIPO who I don't recall ever sanctioning as a US citizen, and whose authority I simply refuse to acknowledge.
Honestly, we need a new world micro-government to govern matters of the Internet, made up of technology experts and civil rights activists, who can make sure that one government cannot control the Internet.
I think that's what the WIPO and WTO are trying to be. Frankly, I'd rather take my risks with the US.
While it's nice that the US govt has some sovriengty inspite of the WIPO, the only thing that's really going to get this dog off our backs is civil disobedience and technical solutions like a freenet based domain name structure instead of a DNS based one.
Of course, the real threat of the WIPO is not domains, but copyrights and patents. They've played crutial roles in trying to destroy open source, and trying impose AIDS patents at the cost of 10 million African lives.
Copyright WAS there to protect artists. It failed, and we just half to get rid of it, not fix it which will likely just pawn the problem off to the next generation, but get rid of it.
Congress is there to represent the people, it failed too. While I would like to get rid of them sometimes, I think any alternative will likely be worse. So here's what we must do, DEFY COPYRIGHTS and ATTACK the intellectual "property" of anyone who tries to impose it That we can do. We have tools like the internet, we have code like freenet and Linux. This we can do.
When we drive enough companies into bankruptcy, and enough regular people get caught up in the storm, then things will happen. Sorry, but the WIPO and DMCA are proof that we are never going to be able to do this thru the system. If we want something done right, we are just going to half to do it ourselves!
.... If there wasn't any copyright protection there wouldn't be any incentive to create anything.
That's like saying that Ford has no incentive to create cars without protection from GM makeing them too. That belief is stupid.
... companies that deal in intellectual property employ tens of thousands of people... thousands of jobs would be lost... Everyone dreams of being famous and profiting from their works.
Before touting the wealth and industry it creates, I wish you would go back and take a look at the American plantation masters - they created alot of wealth and industry too! (of course, while in theory anyone could own slaves - the reality was that only a tiny pertentile actually did - sound familiar?)
It seems the only people who advocate getting rid of intellectual property protections are those who have never created anything and only want to use someone else's work for their own profit.
Hypocrite! 99.9% of everything you know was likely copied from someone else!
Intellectual property protections are actually good because they force people to create something better than what exists today.
Hey, Linux seems to be getting better every day without this force - unless you want to count the GPL;)
Patents are a perfict example...
Yeah they are - like the AIDS patents, and the African nations that were sued in the world court for breaking them, and the 10 million Africans who are dying of AIDS who couldn't afford the royalties.
If car companies could copy from each other freely, you would see a totally different market. Parts would be much more interchangable, standardized, and adaptable. Even as things modernized, they would be modernized as components that would likely be easy to swap in and out. Things like planned obsolesence, or the dealer monopolizing service would be a thing of the past. Prices would probably come down considerably, while R&D especially in enviromental friendly technologies would go up. Today enviromental regulations are often used to gain more profits at the expense of poor people by pushing used cars out of the market and making it more difficult for new competition to get in the game.
Think PC. One of the greatest things to happen to the industry was when IBM and Intel lost the lawsuits claiming that people who coppied their interfaces were voilating their intellectual property. It opened the flood gates for AMD, Compaq, and millions of other vendors.
Getting rid of patents would take things a step further in the PC and the Auto industry.
Looking back thru history we can see the British Invasion, Hitler, Communisim, and today terrorisim. But long behold, the biggest threat to us always has been and always will be oursleves. Our society is still attacking our individual liberties, and this year far more people died from alchol abuse than from the WTC.
The biggest short term threat is already well entrenched among us, "intellectual properety". Copyrights and patents were never intended to be treated like property, that is why they had strict limitations and expiration dates. Unfortunately today, people are so blinded by the "it's property" propaganda that it leads to things like the DMCA, and business process and software patents. Today it is obvious that they were probably never needed, but up until modern times were tolerable. What if we half to choose between copyrights and the internet? What if we half to choose between copyrights and the bill of rights? Well it's already hapening.
history parallels, and a new war
on
The Future of Ideas
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
We can see parallels in history by other institutions that embraced false property rights.
How many of you have herd that freeing slaves was stealing, or that there was no incentive to grow cotton without them, or that the great wealth of America's plantations was proof of slavery's justification. Some people think it's unfair to make this compairison to slavery, but I think it is - for example look at what almost happened in Africa, there millions and millions of people risked death because American pharmacuticals wanted to sue over intellectual property rights.
However, we should consider ourselvs fortunate - because unlike our predacessors I think we can win this war without one bit of violence. It will first be done with copyrights where enforceing copy controlls will become nearly impossible without stirring up massive unpopularity, and imposing massive intrusions into millions of corporations and peoples private lives. Eventually something will half to give because we do live in a democracy. It will later come with patents where the ability to create and manufacture will come to the home. In non democratic countries, both of these will pose a serious problem because the government will likely not be as restrained before things really get out of hand.
Other approaches like the GPL, and public encyclopedias will also seriously relieve the pressure. (thank you RMS)
Slashdot Mirror
This view is almost always espoused by people who don't actually create anything that has value. ....
On the contrary, your view is espoused only by creators who create things of little value, and then expect some glorious all reaching monopoly in return. The mathematician who coppies a math book and adds one or two of their own personal formulas gives society far more value than half the madonna's on the planet.
More than they would have had? Says who? The market determines the value of IP, and that's the way it should stay. ...
Even more bull. Markets are set by natural limits in supply and demand. Information has almost no natural limits in supply, but people do - and copyright law completely ignores this, and so does this agrument. It's a market regulation. get it.
I agree with you. And he then goes on to say "Disobedience makes sense when you are saying there should be no regulation of the kind you attack", and talks about Martin Luther King.
However, someone should point out to him that the problems with MLK started out several hundred years before with indentured servitude. Being short term, for blacks or for whites, and a method for gaining new property in the Americas - it sounded very reasonable. It is only after we learnt the long term consequences that we see how evil it is.
The same is true with copyrights. The consequences of copyrights are becomming all to clear. In this context, they should be opposed all together and civil disobediance makes perfict sense.
In the 1850's, even many of the factory leaders in the north supported laws that contained slavery to the south, and exported them back from the north. But no matter what happened the factory model of business was incompatable with the plantation model. With factories, a mobile workforce was essential - but with plantations it was a nightmare. Having a society that was compatable with both was going to be impossible.
All these people were rich business men, had close relations, and a lot of cross investment. However, inspite of all the things that bound them together - the forces that tore them apart were even greater. Today this manifests itself in the Content model and the Tech model. The content model can not be successfull without placing significant profit limitations on the tech model or visa versa. Contention will boil over until we finally decide that copyrights are bad and rid ourselves of them.
Moral, don't be one of those poor fools who thought that the slave states could peacefully get along with the free states. Those people just didn't get it.
It seems like law enforcemnet has a bad habit of picking fights that they can never win. The war on drugs is a great example, prohibition was another.
However, like most federal overeach, there is also beneficial side effects (to them). For example, the war on drugs helps the govt collect trillions in taxes that it would not have otherwise. Not from drug lords, but from legit busisnessmen who are fear mongered into not using the same tax protections associated with drug lords.
There is likely a similar agenda with copyright enforcement. It likely has little to do with copyrights, but the fact that the same methods used for copyright enforcement can also sacre legit businessmen from peer to peer technologies.
Anyone have experience with something like a Nevada corporation? I hear that it provides alot of advantages, because Nevada has no corporate income tax, and because they have strict privacy laws so you can limit your liability by makeing it extremely difficult to prove you're the real owner of the corporation. If you can do the bulk of your contracting work on your laptop while you visit Vegas, then it could be a huge advantage tax wise.
I also hear that they and florida are the only states that won't share tax information with the IRS. Anyone have experience with this?
I wish people would renember how many time's we've all been screwed over by someone who seeminly out of generosity makes something free, or very easy to distribute - and then when we really need it they ream the screws to us like there's no tommorow. I can't see how anybody could blame Debian for wanting to be proactive just this once.
From my readings here, a lot of people don't understand the 1st Amendment. Technically, it doesn't say you have the freedom of speech/press/etc... - rather it says that the congress shall pass no law to abridge these. This wording is *extremely* important because the former implies that rights are given by government, where the later implies that they exist above government and the law forbids the government from trespassing on them. The 2nd amendment is worded like this too.
By offering my software up for the taking the software thieves are, at least some of the time, depriving me of a sale, so yes, they are depriving me of something. Also, there are things other than personal agreements that people in a modern society are expected to adhere to, for example, laws. In this case, the copyright laws.
That's the problem, this has nothing to do with the right to controll your work, it has to do with the "right" to controll market share. But that is not a right, and every other company in America has to deal with it.
You are correct about the law, but there is another law in the US called the Bill of Rights. In the information age, copying and free expression are becomming inseperable, you can't deny this without being left behind and you can't accept this without choosing between loosing copyrights or loosing freedom of speech. Checkmate!
- Commerce is all about *consent*. Consent involves an exchange acceptable to both sides, not just the consumer.
I'm glad you mentioned that! Because it is about concent, and nobody forces you to write something and release it to anyone, but once it leaves your hand and you wish to restrict everyone elses hand, then it is about coercion. These people have made no personal agreement with you, they have not deprived you of your original copy or anything else.
It's your right to offer software with no restrictions. It's also your right -- or mine -- to offer software with conditions, and the user gets to decide whether he'll accept the software, and along with them the restrictions (within certain limits, such as you can't request somebody's firstborn as a slave).
I'm glad you mentioned slave here, because that argument sounds very familiar to the one - if you don't like slavery, then don't own slaves and shut up. It too was bull because slavery too by it's nature coerced on everyone.
Why was this moded down? it is not flaimbait.
It is very dishonest, and exact opposite of open source. The GPL specifically is about me making decisions about code and information in my posession, and those who I interact with that noone else can impose on me wether "enlightened" or not.
When people talk about the freedom to copy, it is not like the false freedom for me to move into your house or impose on your resources. One is an infinite resource, the other very limited. Making them like they're the same is simply dishonest, and then going a step further and equating it to Marxisim (which promotes the latter) is even more dishonest.
Nope, that's been the case for much of history. In fact that's why copyright was originally invented.. So that the author (artist) himmself could control distribution of his works rather than being ripped of by a pirates, fakes, and imitators. It's also worth considering that most works of art are created for money. Read a bio of Leonardo Da Vinci sometime and see how often he jumped ship to someone who would pay better.
You keep saying that, and it keeps remaining just as wrong. Copyrights were created only to get information into the public domain, and fakes and immitations are less likely when you can freely copy a work rather more likely. There's a *reason* why copyrights have an expiration date - and it's not for the creators. And what is this about pay? Ford is also mitovated by money, but if they have no incentive to create cars as long as GM can make them too - then tough shit.
PS piracy is where thugs board a ship, kill people, and deprive them of their property. To compare this to illegal copying is crude, and noone is proposing that authors be deprived of a copy of their work too.
Which is why OSS has not made the inroads it's proponents hope for. Most computer users, while not naive, are not programmers. They don't want/have the time to unravel the program in order to use it.
WHAT! most car users are not mechanics, but only an idiot would want to buy a car with the hood welded shut. The same is true with software, if it's not open source you are giving up controll and setting yourself up to get nailed.
No. Copyrights and patents were (originally) demanded by inventors, artists, and authors so that they might enjoy the fruit of their works free of pirates, and go on to produce more works. By the 17-1800's almost all goverments realized that protecting the people who produce their economic and intellectual gold was a Good Thing, this protection created jobs and engendered trade and economic prosperity.
BZZT WRONG! Just the opposite, copyrights were created as a reward for publishers not to say bad things about the King. In order to fight this censorship, US copyrights were intentionally made available to everybody, to have an expiration date, and allow heavially for fair use. "Protection" and demands of creators have little to do with it - getting information into the public domain was the only goal. Prople who treat copyrights like property ruin this for everybody, and can only lead us to a DMCA like police state.
Huh? What kind of crack pipe are you smoking? Have you ever worked on a large software project?
Yep, the bulk of the costs are not writing code. In fact a good half the project is spent collecting requirements and formulating specifications from those.
But that's an aspect of development.
So is testing, so is distribution, etc.
Collecting requirements, formulation specs, testing, and especially distribution are areas that are by definition limited to the confines of one corporate orginisation in a closed product. Free software DRASTICLY increases the span of people who can contribute to all of these, and projects like Linux are renound for being excellent at all of these.
To understand open source, you half to understand that copyrights ard patents are not free market, but government monopolies that artificially manipulate the market. In order to get arround the damage this causes, an established and well founded University system is required to get information and knowledge out into the open. Now the GPL and internet are changing this and making it so that people can actually learn, share, and apply knowledge in the free market way it was always intended to be.
America's rich because it's free, not because it's a bully. I myself am more interested in maintaining my rights then getting along. I don't think Americans can expect the US to stick a bag over it's head while external sovriegnties put the screws to us. ESPECIALLY the WIPO who I don't recall ever sanctioning as a US citizen, and whose authority I simply refuse to acknowledge.
Honestly, we need a new world micro-government to govern matters of the Internet, made up of technology experts and civil rights activists, who can make sure that one government cannot control the Internet.
I think that's what the WIPO and WTO are trying to be. Frankly, I'd rather take my risks with the US.
When all is said and done, I really trust the US court system before I would trust the WIPO. Which isn't saying much, but still.....
While it's nice that the US govt has some sovriengty inspite of the WIPO, the only thing that's really going to get this dog off our backs is civil disobedience and technical solutions like a freenet based domain name structure instead of a DNS based one.
Of course, the real threat of the WIPO is not domains, but copyrights and patents. They've played crutial roles in trying to destroy open source, and trying impose AIDS patents at the cost of 10 million African lives.
Copyright WAS there to protect artists. It failed, and we just half to get rid of it, not fix it which will likely just pawn the problem off to the next generation, but get rid of it.
Congress is there to represent the people, it failed too. While I would like to get rid of them sometimes, I think any alternative will likely be worse. So here's what we must do, DEFY COPYRIGHTS and ATTACK the intellectual "property" of anyone who tries to impose it That we can do. We have tools like the internet, we have code like freenet and Linux. This we can do.
When we drive enough companies into bankruptcy, and enough regular people get caught up in the storm, then things will happen. Sorry, but the WIPO and DMCA are proof that we are never going to be able to do this thru the system. If we want something done right, we are just going to half to do it ourselves!
That's like saying that Ford has no incentive to create cars without protection from GM makeing them too. That belief is stupid.
Before touting the wealth and industry it creates, I wish you would go back and take a look at the American plantation masters - they created alot of wealth and industry too! (of course, while in theory anyone could own slaves - the reality was that only a tiny pertentile actually did - sound familiar?)
It seems the only people who advocate getting rid of intellectual property protections are those who have never created anything and only want to use someone else's work for their own profit.
Hypocrite! 99.9% of everything you know was likely copied from someone else!
Intellectual property protections are actually good because they force people to create something better than what exists today.
Hey, Linux seems to be getting better every day without this force - unless you want to count the GPL ;)
Patents are a perfict example...
Yeah they are - like the AIDS patents, and the African nations that were sued in the world court for breaking them, and the 10 million Africans who are dying of AIDS who couldn't afford the royalties.
If car companies could copy from each other freely, you would see a totally different market. Parts would be much more interchangable, standardized, and adaptable. Even as things modernized, they would be modernized as components that would likely be easy to swap in and out. Things like planned obsolesence, or the dealer monopolizing service would be a thing of the past. Prices would probably come down considerably, while R&D especially in enviromental friendly technologies would go up. Today enviromental regulations are often used to gain more profits at the expense of poor people by pushing used cars out of the market and making it more difficult for new competition to get in the game.
Think PC. One of the greatest things to happen to the industry was when IBM and Intel lost the lawsuits claiming that people who coppied their interfaces were voilating their intellectual property. It opened the flood gates for AMD, Compaq, and millions of other vendors.
Getting rid of patents would take things a step further in the PC and the Auto industry.
Looking back thru history we can see the British Invasion, Hitler, Communisim, and today terrorisim. But long behold, the biggest threat to us always has been and always will be oursleves. Our society is still attacking our individual liberties, and this year far more people died from alchol abuse than from the WTC.
The biggest short term threat is already well entrenched among us, "intellectual properety". Copyrights and patents were never intended to be treated like property, that is why they had strict limitations and expiration dates. Unfortunately today, people are so blinded by the "it's property" propaganda that it leads to things like the DMCA, and business process and software patents. Today it is obvious that they were probably never needed, but up until modern times were tolerable. What if we half to choose between copyrights and the internet? What if we half to choose between copyrights and the bill of rights? Well it's already hapening.
We can see parallels in history by other institutions that embraced false property rights. How many of you have herd that freeing slaves was stealing, or that there was no incentive to grow cotton without them, or that the great wealth of America's plantations was proof of slavery's justification. Some people think it's unfair to make this compairison to slavery, but I think it is - for example look at what almost happened in Africa, there millions and millions of people risked death because American pharmacuticals wanted to sue over intellectual property rights.
However, we should consider ourselvs fortunate - because unlike our predacessors I think we can win this war without one bit of violence. It will first be done with copyrights where enforceing copy controlls will become nearly impossible without stirring up massive unpopularity, and imposing massive intrusions into millions of corporations and peoples private lives. Eventually something will half to give because we do live in a democracy. It will later come with patents where the ability to create and manufacture will come to the home. In non democratic countries, both of these will pose a serious problem because the government will likely not be as restrained before things really get out of hand.
Other approaches like the GPL, and public encyclopedias will also seriously relieve the pressure. (thank you RMS)