While you make excellent points, you're bordering on a false dichotomy. Science and belief don't necessarily have to be dissociated. That's not to say they aren't often dissociated, but they don't have to be.
I am a religious person, if you want to call it that, and believe in the God of the Christian Bible and the stories therein. (Which of them are fictitious and which are fact are not incredibly important to me. I take lessons in morality more than history from the Bible.) However, my beliefs are influenced by science and I see them as a "moving target," like you described science. If science shows me with great understanding that the world is exceedingly older than Biblical scholars believe, then that is truth. I do not believe my God to be an enemy of logic and science, so my beliefs morph based on new understandings presented to me by science and technology.
That need still exists today, and the principle behind it is still solid -- so solid in fact, that it's written into our Constitution as a specific right granted to the government. And you might recall, our founding fathers were quite stingy about giving the federal government much power at all even after the failure known as the Articles of Confederation. That speaks clearly to the need for patents and copyright.
Actually, not all the Founding Fathers were in fervent agreement about patents and copyright. In particular, Thomas Jefferson himself was very particular about giving any "dibs" on ideas. He believed that ideas cannot be owned, and still stated that it is not the right of any man to own an idea as far as it is without himself. It's hard to tell precisely from his letter, but it seems like he was not greatly fond of the idea of patents in any form.
Just because something is written into the Constitution does not mean every one of the signers agreed wholly with it. The US Constitution is an imperfect document formed by many imperfect men of different beliefs and opinions.
Slashdot Mirror
"No [ISP] can block... legitimate use conducted through the Internet."
Anybody else see the problem here?
While you make excellent points, you're bordering on a false dichotomy. Science and belief don't necessarily have to be dissociated. That's not to say they aren't often dissociated, but they don't have to be.
I am a religious person, if you want to call it that, and believe in the God of the Christian Bible and the stories therein. (Which of them are fictitious and which are fact are not incredibly important to me. I take lessons in morality more than history from the Bible.) However, my beliefs are influenced by science and I see them as a "moving target," like you described science. If science shows me with great understanding that the world is exceedingly older than Biblical scholars believe, then that is truth. I do not believe my God to be an enemy of logic and science, so my beliefs morph based on new understandings presented to me by science and technology.
That need still exists today, and the principle behind it is still solid -- so solid in fact, that it's written into our Constitution as a specific right granted to the government. And you might recall, our founding fathers were quite stingy about giving the federal government much power at all even after the failure known as the Articles of Confederation. That speaks clearly to the need for patents and copyright.
Actually, not all the Founding Fathers were in fervent agreement about patents and copyright. In particular, Thomas Jefferson himself was very particular about giving any "dibs" on ideas. He believed that ideas cannot be owned, and still stated that it is not the right of any man to own an idea as far as it is without himself. It's hard to tell precisely from his letter, but it seems like he was not greatly fond of the idea of patents in any form.
Just because something is written into the Constitution does not mean every one of the signers agreed wholly with it. The US Constitution is an imperfect document formed by many imperfect men of different beliefs and opinions.