IMHO, software patents are a special case, because it doesn't cost much to invent and manufacture software. This leads to lots of problems.
I just don't understand the argument for differentiating between software patents and any other type of patent. When software vendors complain about piracy, they claim huge expenditures on research and development. I think their claims are true. I'm sure Microsoft spends plenty on research and development. Why is software any less expensive to develop than anything else?
The economics of software DEVELOPMENT (as opposed to software sales or distribution) is exactly the same as the economics of the development of any other kind of intellectual property. Research expenditures become wildly inflated because decision-makers plan their spending according to what they think their net income will be. The higher the anticipated net income, the more lavish their spending. Since intellectual property laws create artificially high profit margins, the "cost" of creating intellectual property rises to its own level of incompetence, so to speak.
I think your point about the cost of patent searches is more germane to the discussion. But even on that point I question the soundness of the distinction. Why is it more difficult or costly to do a software patent search than it is to do any other kind of patent search? I've never attempted either kind, so I would appreciate some data from someone who has. Whether or not one can make a distinction between software patents and non-software patents depends upon what the results of such data would show.
Recent patent reforms have fixed this somewhat, so your protection is 20 years after filing or 17 years after issue. I don't know if this reform addresses the issue of a string of continuations being used to extend patent life.
Actually, you can have effective protection for longer than 20 years by using a provisional patent application. From the archives of the USPTO: Provisional applications are not examined on their merits. A provisional application will become abandoned by the operation of law twelve months from its filing date. The twelve month pendency for a provisional application is not counted toward the 20 year term of a patent granted on a subsequently filed non-provisional application which relies on the filing date of the provisional application.
These things are renewable, too, I think. Me no lawyer.
A business process consisting of utilitzing the lameness of the USPTO staff to create increased revenue without doing a whole lot of work.
Prior Art
Just about every patent ever filed. But who cares.
Detailed Description
Search the patent database.
Find something that has already been patented.
Change all occurences of the word "therefore" to "it follows that" making sure to adjust for appropriate capitalization.
Resubmit the patent with your company's name on it.
Phone your legal department to alert them. This will give them time to start preparing a case against patent violators in advance of the patent being granted.
Make sure to send a bottle of Chivas Regal to the patent officer fielding your claim.
When the patent is granted, let the lawyers out of their kennel.
If, for instance, I decide to contribute to a Free Software project, I do so knowing full well that someone may profit from my work although I do not.
You:
This is not the philosophy behind the GPL. If you really want your software to be free, use the artistic or BSD license.
Why is conforming to the philosophy of the GPL more important than doing what's best? I don't care about licensing issues at all because I really really believe that even the brightest and most creative genius would be nothing without a community of participants. Why do we celebrate genius at all? Because genius is attributed to the individual, whereas it really belongs to a community. Just because I work a little harder or I'm born with a higher IQ than you doesn't entitle me to greater property rights.
If we really wanted to push the ethics of celebrating individual genius to it's distasteful conclusion, we ought to publicly disparage and humiliate stupid people, not educate them. Insofar as a person's gifts are the result of participation in a community, they do not own the fruits thereof. What remains of a person's gift is individual effort and inborn talent. Given that intellectual property laws are only concerned with protecting the creative output, and not the effort expended to produce that output, IP laws end up rewarding only inborn talent. I don't think that rewarding talent is a)necessary or b)fair. Those with talent will always stand out, almost by definition. Rewarding them is unecessary. I like the Japanese approach (I'm sure some anthropologist will tell me that this is no longer the case in Japan, but I read it ten years ago in a book about Japanese business practices called Theory Z, IIRC) which discourages individual recognition in favour of "team" recognition. This approach pays homage to the obvious truth that almost all of every worthwhile civilized human undertaking depends upon cooperation.
The stuff that really NEEDS to get done will get done with or without intellectual property laws and information use-licenses. The stuff that doesn't get done probably wasn't all that important in the first place. I find it ironic that a legal regime which prides itself on promoting the useful arts and sciences gives "Jerry Springer" and "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" a higher place in the intellectual pantheon than Shakespeare.
When I say the "warez" version, I am referring to an unauthorised copy of a copy-protected work. By unauthorised, I mean unregistered. My point is that even if you did manage to reverse engineer the software in question, the "cracked" version would be unsupported and hence less popular.
The "cracked" version might still be supported by any group of people who could sustain a business by charging for support. I'm not sure if other laws impinge on this type of operation, so this could be a moot point.
Secondly, the reseller of binary-only GNU (for instance) software might not be as knowledgable as the original author. How many programmers out there have written programs that others would have a hard time understanding? Quite a few, certainly. I am not suggesting that programmers go out and exploit obscurity to make extra money. They just have a natural advantage in dealing with the code.
I agree that there would be less incentive for programmers to contribute. They would feel like they're being shortchanged. After all, someone else would be making money off of their work. But I also think that people would very quickly learn NOT to buy binary-only products and download software or purchase it at marginal cost. Then the playing field is level. The big guys can try to sell consumer software in shrink wrapped packages with manuals and stuff. That's value added. I think there will be a market for that. But there will also be room for local and regional competitors who offer good value. I could publish my own well-written manual for Windows2000. It may not be technically perfect, but it would be of some value to a consumer. Perhaps I could also offer 1-900 24/7 customer support lines as well. Software is a relationship, not a product.
In the final analysis, it doesn't matter who makes money as long as everyone is able to do things voluntarily. If, for instance, I decide to contribute to a Free Software project, I do so knowing full well that someone may profit from my work although I do not. That may bother me a little, but I really enjoy contributing. It's an interesting activity. It's a hobby. People don't stop playing the guitar just because someone steals a riff from them. I've had songs of mine performed by other people from whom I've never collected a dime. It didn't bother me because the music didn't really belong to me in the first place. I don't know where it came from or how I was able to come up with it. That magic has been destroyed by turning everything into a commodity. Now instead of making music, you're just a slave in the salt mines.
I'd better quit now. I have a feeling Netscape is getting ready to crash.
I thought the GPL was about "free as in speech", not "free as in beer". You have only established that without copyrgihts you'd always be able to get free beer, which is less than what the GPL and its philosophy demands.
Technically we haven't established anything. We're not proving factual claims, we're arguing about what OUGHT to be done. We can argue about utility and morality and aesthetics and whatever else befits a discussion about the Good Life, but we aren't really proving or disproving things. QED:-)
Nevertheless, I can see your point about "Free Beer". A suggestion that copyright be abolished could certainly be seen as promoting freedom of beer rather than freedom of speech. But this is a question of individual perception, and not implicit in the proposal. Some people will see a park as a place to get a suntan, others will see it as a noble statement of common civic purpose. One cannot force people to regard freedom in one particular way. Freeloaders may not understand that Free Software was created by and still requires a huge contribution of volunteer effort but their ignorance doesn't make the noble purpose any less noble.
If it was'nt for fascistic[1] existing copyright laws, COPYLEFT would not have been invented.
The apostrophe in "wasn't" goes after the 'n' and before the 't'.
This may be a case of oh felix culpa!. I'm not sure from your post if you are happy or sad about the existence of copyleft. Not that you have to be one or the other, of course...
Trying to sell software would be pointless if there were no copyrights - negating the need for the GPL.
The GPL protects our freedom to share source code and it tries to ensure that our efforts in writing free software won't be exploited for commercial gain. If there can be no commercial gain from re-selling the voluntary contributions of time that go into making Free Software, as would be the case if copyright law were abolished, then at least part of the GPL's job is done. However, it may be the case that many fewer people contribute because they cannot be *guaranteed* protection from commercialization of their work. Be that as it may, there is enough material in circulation now that if nothing new were written for 50 years we'd probably still have lots to draw upon.
Information is a system of symbols; intellectual property law forces us to pay to use some symbols. We ought not to allow people to own symbols since there are a finite number of combinations of them (ok, this is debatable) and those will eventually be exhausted.
Sorry -- the statement about there being a finite number of combinations of symbols is obviously false. Please disregard it. Since there is a large number of symbol types, and many tokens of a given symbol type can be repeated in any pattern, the number of combinations would probably be, at least for practical purposes, infinite.
But otherwise my post is the paragon of Slashdot virtue.:-)
This is actually my third time trying to respond to your post. I've realized that the textarea buffer in Netscape (at least the one I'm using) has some size limit, so when I get too verbose and long-winded -- *POOF* -- everything vanishes into nothingness. Netscape punishes me for my grandiosity and hubris. Such is the fate of ideas. They are transient things.
To quickly summarize what I tried to say (before Netscape crashes again): your point is true. You could do anything with anyone's information (published information, that is, not private information). No one would stop you, but you would also face a perfectly competitive market. That means your business would only barely make a profit, even with zero marginal cost.
I suspect that this "GPL unnecessary with no copyright" meme arose because some people have decided that because some other people misuse copyrights, that all copyrights must therefore be bad. This is black-and-white thinking, and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of both copyright, the GPL and the purpose of the GPL.
That's not how my opinion was formed, but I can't speak for anyone else. The GPL is meant to defend the realm of problem-solving against commercial enclosure. The philosophy of the GPL seems to say that we ought to treat all information as a proper subset of natural language. Information is a system of symbols; intellectual property law forces us to pay to use some symbols. We ought not to allow people to own symbols since there are a finite number of combinations of them (ok, this is debatable) and those will eventually be exhausted. Besides that, language doesn't benefit from ownership the way real property does. It benefits from use and fluidity. Intellectual property law places restrictions on symbols which degrade their utility but allow them to be conveniently packaged and sold profitably. This corporate language management is the thing that really pisses me off. Copyright IS bad when it is abused, but that's not what led me to the conclusion that without copyright the GPL would be unecessary.
You are right. But what I suggested in my original post was not only doing away with copyright laws, but introducing the exact OPPOSITE of copyright laws, namely copyleft laws. Laws that prohibit anyone from hiding any information from anyone!
I think it makes sense for governments to be forced to be totally open (except for military information, and then only during wartime), but I have little hope of that happening. For everyone else, its probably safer having no information regulating laws than to replace the current regime with copyleft. Jealously guarded secrets would eventually be forced into circulation anyway. There is so much mimetic pollution out there that a little break from the noise would be a welcome change.
They're scarfing down movies and popular songs in MP3 format.
So? More power to them. I reckon there's a backlog of about 500,000,000 hours of viewing or listening pleasure waiting to be encoded and uploaded. That should be enough to keep everyone entertained until well past doomsday.
Go back to handing out your greasy leaflets downtown. It's safer.
You're overestimating the potency of your own words. Downtown Winnipeg is quite safe, actually and you are far less threatening than that. Feel free to flame away. If you'd like to look me up and challenge me to a proper fistfight, I'd be game for that, too.
By the way, my "leaflets" are never greasy. They're always crisp and juicy. That's because I use CRISCO(TM) Brand Verbal Shortening from Procter&Gamble(R).
If copyright were done away with, I could take the Slackware distribution, make a bunch of source code changes, compile those changes and sell the resulting binaries while refusing to give anyone my source code changes.
No one would buy them. They would continue using whatever software they are using now, and happily so.
Anyone could do anything with whatever they could get their mits on.
That doesn't sound so bad...
[without copyright law] people are encouraged to keep [the source code] secret. Because there is no copyright law to allow the original owner to put requirements on source code use, they cannot prevent people from burying the code changes in a vault to get a leg up on the competition.
Yes, intellectual property laws encourage creators to share knowledge. That is true. But the commercial enterprises engaged in the creation of intellectual property would eventually be forced out of business or operate on a drastically reduced scale -- perhaps regionally. Whoever made the post about the software industry turning into a Hong Kong flea market was probably right. You could sell your modified, souped up version of Linux, but eventually you'd give up because prices would be pushed too low for you to continue. I admit there is a price to be paid for what I am suggesting. I know that. I'm only suggesting that in the long run, we will be better off concentrating on the production of tangible goods. The real economy depends upon those goods, and not on the production of information as a commodity.
Soon, since everyone wants "SuperDuperBus" support to use the latest hardware, I've got my sourceless software out everywhere. And with those subtle incompatibilities (unexamined, remember, no one else has that source) I've gained effective control over the OS.
Hardware compatibility depends on design standards and interfaces. As long as those aren't kept secret you would be no better off than any of the other million ISV's. Would the standards be governed by professional associations? By government? By ad hoc groups? I don't know, but all of those alternatives are possible. Many of the outcomes you seek can be achieved without intellectual property protection. Not all of them, of course.
Now please go learn a little about the GPL, it's purpose, and copyright law before continuing to spread what is IMHO an extremely dangerous meme.
I'll definitely do that. Thanks for your intelligent comment.
Yes. From a practical point of view, however, you're implying open-source entertainment.
I'm not implying open source entertainment. Open source only has significance (insofar as it can apply to anything other than source code) in a legal environment which protects intellectual property. If one eliminates restrictions on intellectual property, one erases the line between what is open and what is closed.
This also means that the [persons being entertained] start thinking like linux afficionadi, namely, that the license of a piece of entertainment is the most important feature of that piece; and reject anything, no matter how well-made, that is not open source. That requires quite a lot of discipline... and doesn't blend well with being entertained.
I'm actually advocating doing away with licensing entirely, so no one would have to consult lawyers before deciding how to entertain themselves. Normal people like you and me are capable of doing entertaining things, too. We don't have to leave every minute of our leisure time in the hands of someone else.
Had you noticed your comrades here are all scarfing down as much content as they can steal?
The content on/. is not commercial anyways. Copyright has no impact whatsoever on material posted by individuals. This is exactly the kind of content that would survive the death of copyright. Hey, I appreciate your candour, though.
If copyright is done away with the GPL becomes so many meaningless words.
If copyright were done away with, the GPL would be unecessary.
I wouldn't cry of that were to become the case. Lots of people who visit this forum regularly would.
Learn to proofread your posts. The word "of" should be "if". Nobody who visits this forum would cry because they'd have access to the same material they use now. If you eliminate copyright, former owners of intellectual property can't simply withdraw material from circulation. It would remain available for anyone who wants it.
Shouldn't you go back to handing out your greasy leaflets downtown, Sydney Weidman?
MR. COOPER: Let me just make a point here that I believe should be clear, and that is to the extent that the answer to any of the questions Mr. Garbus asks is known to you only through communications from counsel you should not provide the substance of those communications in answering the question.
Copyright's not tricky, it's harmful and useless. It's harmful because it's a restriction on free speech, and it's useless because it claims to encourage the production of creative works, but all it does is allow the concentration of media control.
Even left-wing academics have a fit when they see comments like mine, because they have so much invested in this archaic, anachronistic, costly, top-heavy IP regime. It's time to clear out the cobwebs and the deadwood and start being human again.
Send a message to these twirps: We don't need you or your crap polluting our sensory environment any longer. We'll entertain ourselves thank you very much.
Don't spend another cent on movies, CD's DVD's pay-tv, video rentals, or magazines owned by conglomerates etc etc. These mofo's have dumped enough bs on us to last a century. We don't need to encourage production of entertainment by protecting copyright. We already have far too much entertainment.
Yeah, hopefully they'll have to arrest, prosecute, and incarcerate so many people that the music industry will just call it a day and go home.
We ought to boycott every goddamn form of slime-bucket commercial entertainment in existence. Then maybe the newly merged entity GE/NBC/ABC/Sony/Universal/Viacom/AOL/Time-Warner/W alt Disney/Hustler Unlimited Incorporated will stop threatening to airlift 5,000,000 surplus copies of Snow White 1000th Anniversary Special Edition Deluxe Box Set to Eritrea and send some fucking food instead. Who the hell needs refried dreams anyways?
Your average indy label or low-moderate profile major label deal will net you something around $1-1.50 per CD. If you're so lucky as to have worldwide distribution, you will get about half that (.75 per) for overseas sales.
CD sales are not real music. Live music is real music. World tours and mega-bands live in the fantasy-land of mass-produced, mass-marketed, canned meat. Music is for people, not corporations. If a musician has to make a living playing bars in his hometown then so be it.
Expecting remuneration is not being "in it for the money".
Yes it is. Hoping for remuneration is OK, but expecting it is too much. Nobody should *expect* remuneration. Everything depends on trust and good will.
There is no supra-legal code (including the US Constitution) which protects intellectual property rights as an end in themselves. The protection afforded artists has been because of the good will of the citizens. If that good will has worn out, then like it or not, heh, the times they are a changin'. (Thanks, Bob)
Slashdot Mirror
I just don't understand the argument for differentiating between software patents and any other type of patent. When software vendors complain about piracy, they claim huge expenditures on research and development. I think their claims are true. I'm sure Microsoft spends plenty on research and development. Why is software any less expensive to develop than anything else?
The economics of software DEVELOPMENT (as opposed to software sales or distribution) is exactly the same as the economics of the development of any other kind of intellectual property. Research expenditures become wildly inflated because decision-makers plan their spending according to what they think their net income will be. The higher the anticipated net income, the more lavish their spending. Since intellectual property laws create artificially high profit margins, the "cost" of creating intellectual property rises to its own level of incompetence, so to speak.
I think your point about the cost of patent searches is more germane to the discussion. But even on that point I question the soundness of the distinction. Why is it more difficult or costly to do a software patent search than it is to do any other kind of patent search? I've never attempted either kind, so I would appreciate some data from someone who has. Whether or not one can make a distinction between software patents and non-software patents depends upon what the results of such data would show.
From the future.
Actually, you can have effective protection for longer than 20 years by using a provisional patent application. From the archives of the USPTO:
Provisional applications are not examined on their merits. A provisional application will become abandoned by the operation of law twelve months from its filing date. The twelve month pendency for a provisional application is not counted toward the 20 year term of a patent granted on a subsequently filed non-provisional application which relies on the filing date of the provisional application.
These things are renewable, too, I think. Me no lawyer.
A business process consisting of utilitzing the lameness of the USPTO staff to create increased revenue without doing a whole lot of work.
Prior Art
Just about every patent ever filed. But who cares.
Detailed Description
If, for instance, I decide to contribute to a Free Software project, I do so knowing full well that someone may profit from my work although I do not.
You:
This is not the philosophy behind the GPL. If you really want your software to be free, use the artistic or BSD license.
Why is conforming to the philosophy of the GPL more important than doing what's best? I don't care about licensing issues at all because I really really believe that even the brightest and most creative genius would be nothing without a community of participants. Why do we celebrate genius at all? Because genius is attributed to the individual, whereas it really belongs to a community. Just because I work a little harder or I'm born with a higher IQ than you doesn't entitle me to greater property rights.
If we really wanted to push the ethics of celebrating individual genius to it's distasteful conclusion, we ought to publicly disparage and humiliate stupid people, not educate them. Insofar as a person's gifts are the result of participation in a community, they do not own the fruits thereof. What remains of a person's gift is individual effort and inborn talent. Given that intellectual property laws are only concerned with protecting the creative output, and not the effort expended to produce that output, IP laws end up rewarding only inborn talent. I don't think that rewarding talent is a)necessary or b)fair. Those with talent will always stand out, almost by definition. Rewarding them is unecessary. I like the Japanese approach (I'm sure some anthropologist will tell me that this is no longer the case in Japan, but I read it ten years ago in a book about Japanese business practices called Theory Z, IIRC) which discourages individual recognition in favour of "team" recognition. This approach pays homage to the obvious truth that almost all of every worthwhile civilized human undertaking depends upon cooperation.
The stuff that really NEEDS to get done will get done with or without intellectual property laws and information use-licenses. The stuff that doesn't get done probably wasn't all that important in the first place. I find it ironic that a legal regime which prides itself on promoting the useful arts and sciences gives "Jerry Springer" and "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" a higher place in the intellectual pantheon than Shakespeare.
The "cracked" version might still be supported by any group of people who could sustain a business by charging for support. I'm not sure if other laws impinge on this type of operation, so this could be a moot point.
Secondly, the reseller of binary-only GNU (for instance) software might not be as knowledgable as the original author. How many programmers out there have written programs that others would have a hard time understanding? Quite a few, certainly. I am not suggesting that programmers go out and exploit obscurity to make extra money. They just have a natural advantage in dealing with the code.
I agree that there would be less incentive for programmers to contribute. They would feel like they're being shortchanged. After all, someone else would be making money off of their work. But I also think that people would very quickly learn NOT to buy binary-only products and download software or purchase it at marginal cost. Then the playing field is level. The big guys can try to sell consumer software in shrink wrapped packages with manuals and stuff. That's value added. I think there will be a market for that. But there will also be room for local and regional competitors who offer good value. I could publish my own well-written manual for Windows2000. It may not be technically perfect, but it would be of some value to a consumer. Perhaps I could also offer 1-900 24/7 customer support lines as well. Software is a relationship, not a product.
In the final analysis, it doesn't matter who makes money as long as everyone is able to do things voluntarily. If, for instance, I decide to contribute to a Free Software project, I do so knowing full well that someone may profit from my work although I do not. That may bother me a little, but I really enjoy contributing. It's an interesting activity. It's a hobby. People don't stop playing the guitar just because someone steals a riff from them. I've had songs of mine performed by other people from whom I've never collected a dime. It didn't bother me because the music didn't really belong to me in the first place. I don't know where it came from or how I was able to come up with it. That magic has been destroyed by turning everything into a commodity. Now instead of making music, you're just a slave in the salt mines.
I'd better quit now. I have a feeling Netscape is getting ready to crash.
Technically we haven't established anything. We're not proving factual claims, we're arguing about what OUGHT to be done. We can argue about utility and morality and aesthetics and whatever else befits a discussion about the Good Life, but we aren't really proving or disproving things. QED :-)
Nevertheless, I can see your point about "Free Beer". A suggestion that copyright be abolished could certainly be seen as promoting freedom of beer rather than freedom of speech. But this is a question of individual perception, and not implicit in the proposal. Some people will see a park as a place to get a suntan, others will see it as a noble statement of common civic purpose. One cannot force people to regard freedom in one particular way. Freeloaders may not understand that Free Software was created by and still requires a huge contribution of volunteer effort but their ignorance doesn't make the noble purpose any less noble.
The apostrophe in "wasn't" goes after the 'n' and before the 't'.
This may be a case of oh felix culpa!. I'm not sure from your post if you are happy or sad about the existence of copyleft. Not that you have to be one or the other, of course...
The GPL protects our freedom to share source code and it tries to ensure that our efforts in writing free software won't be exploited for commercial gain. If there can be no commercial gain from re-selling the voluntary contributions of time that go into making Free Software, as would be the case if copyright law were abolished, then at least part of the GPL's job is done. However, it may be the case that many fewer people contribute because they cannot be *guaranteed* protection from commercialization of their work. Be that as it may, there is enough material in circulation now that if nothing new were written for 50 years we'd probably still have lots to draw upon.
Sorry -- the statement about there being a finite number of combinations of symbols is obviously false. Please disregard it. Since there is a large number of symbol types, and many tokens of a given symbol type can be repeated in any pattern, the number of combinations would probably be, at least for practical purposes, infinite.
But otherwise my post is the paragon of Slashdot virtue. :-)
To quickly summarize what I tried to say (before Netscape crashes again): your point is true. You could do anything with anyone's information (published information, that is, not private information). No one would stop you, but you would also face a perfectly competitive market. That means your business would only barely make a profit, even with zero marginal cost.
I suspect that this "GPL unnecessary with no copyright" meme arose because some people have decided that because some other people misuse copyrights, that all copyrights must therefore be bad. This is black-and-white thinking, and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of both copyright, the GPL and the purpose of the GPL.
That's not how my opinion was formed, but I can't speak for anyone else. The GPL is meant to defend the realm of problem-solving against commercial enclosure. The philosophy of the GPL seems to say that we ought to treat all information as a proper subset of natural language. Information is a system of symbols; intellectual property law forces us to pay to use some symbols. We ought not to allow people to own symbols since there are a finite number of combinations of them (ok, this is debatable) and those will eventually be exhausted. Besides that, language doesn't benefit from ownership the way real property does. It benefits from use and fluidity. Intellectual property law places restrictions on symbols which degrade their utility but allow them to be conveniently packaged and sold profitably. This corporate language management is the thing that really pisses me off. Copyright IS bad when it is abused, but that's not what led me to the conclusion that without copyright the GPL would be unecessary.
I think it makes sense for governments to be forced to be totally open (except for military information, and then only during wartime), but I have little hope of that happening. For everyone else, its probably safer having no information regulating laws than to replace the current regime with copyleft. Jealously guarded secrets would eventually be forced into circulation anyway. There is so much mimetic pollution out there that a little break from the noise would be a welcome change.
So? More power to them. I reckon there's a backlog of about 500,000,000 hours of viewing or listening pleasure waiting to be encoded and uploaded. That should be enough to keep everyone entertained until well past doomsday.
Go back to handing out your greasy leaflets downtown. It's safer.
You're overestimating the potency of your own words. Downtown Winnipeg is quite safe, actually and you are far less threatening than that. Feel free to flame away. If you'd like to look me up and challenge me to a proper fistfight, I'd be game for that, too.
By the way, my "leaflets" are never greasy. They're always crisp and juicy. That's because I use CRISCO(TM) Brand Verbal Shortening from Procter&Gamble(R).
No one would buy them. They would continue using whatever software they are using now, and happily so.
Anyone could do anything with whatever they could get their mits on.
That doesn't sound so bad...
[without copyright law] people are encouraged to keep [the source code] secret. Because there is no copyright law to allow the original owner to put requirements on source code use, they cannot prevent people from burying the code changes in a vault to get a leg up on the competition.
Yes, intellectual property laws encourage creators to share knowledge. That is true. But the commercial enterprises engaged in the creation of intellectual property would eventually be forced out of business or operate on a drastically reduced scale -- perhaps regionally. Whoever made the post about the software industry turning into a Hong Kong flea market was probably right. You could sell your modified, souped up version of Linux, but eventually you'd give up because prices would be pushed too low for you to continue. I admit there is a price to be paid for what I am suggesting. I know that. I'm only suggesting that in the long run, we will be better off concentrating on the production of tangible goods. The real economy depends upon those goods, and not on the production of information as a commodity.
Soon, since everyone wants "SuperDuperBus" support to use the latest hardware, I've got my sourceless software out everywhere. And with those subtle incompatibilities (unexamined, remember, no one else has that source) I've gained effective control over the OS.
Hardware compatibility depends on design standards and interfaces. As long as those aren't kept secret you would be no better off than any of the other million ISV's. Would the standards be governed by professional associations? By government? By ad hoc groups? I don't know, but all of those alternatives are possible. Many of the outcomes you seek can be achieved without intellectual property protection. Not all of them, of course.
Now please go learn a little about the GPL, it's purpose, and copyright law before continuing to spread what is IMHO an extremely dangerous meme.
I'll definitely do that. Thanks for your intelligent comment.
I'm not implying open source entertainment. Open source only has significance (insofar as it can apply to anything other than source code) in a legal environment which protects intellectual property. If one eliminates restrictions on intellectual property, one erases the line between what is open and what is closed.
This also means that the [persons being entertained] start thinking like linux afficionadi, namely, that the license of a piece of entertainment is the most important feature of that piece; and reject anything, no matter how well-made, that is not open source. That requires quite a lot of discipline ... and doesn't blend well with being entertained.
I'm actually advocating doing away with licensing entirely, so no one would have to consult lawyers before deciding how to entertain themselves. Normal people like you and me are capable of doing entertaining things, too. We don't have to leave every minute of our leisure time in the hands of someone else.
The content on /. is not commercial anyways. Copyright has no impact whatsoever on material posted by individuals. This is exactly the kind of content that would survive the death of copyright. Hey, I appreciate your candour, though.
If copyright were done away with, the GPL would be unecessary.
I wouldn't cry of that were to become the case. Lots of people who visit this forum regularly would.
Learn to proofread your posts. The word "of" should be "if". Nobody who visits this forum would cry because they'd have access to the same material they use now. If you eliminate copyright, former owners of intellectual property can't simply withdraw material from circulation. It would remain available for anyone who wants it.
Shouldn't you go back to handing out your greasy leaflets downtown, Sydney Weidman?
Why bother? Slashdot is much more efficient.
What the heck does this mean?
Even left-wing academics have a fit when they see comments like mine, because they have so much invested in this archaic, anachronistic, costly, top-heavy IP regime. It's time to clear out the cobwebs and the deadwood and start being human again.
We don't need you or your crap polluting our sensory environment any longer. We'll entertain ourselves thank you very much.
Don't spend another cent on movies, CD's DVD's pay-tv, video rentals, or magazines owned by conglomerates etc etc. These mofo's have dumped enough bs on us to last a century. We don't need to encourage production of entertainment by protecting copyright. We already have far too much entertainment.
We ought to boycott every goddamn form of slime-bucket commercial entertainment in existence. Then maybe the newly merged entity GE/NBC/ABC/Sony/Universal/Viacom/AOL/Time-Warner/W alt Disney/Hustler Unlimited Incorporated will stop threatening to airlift 5,000,000 surplus copies of Snow White 1000th Anniversary Special Edition Deluxe Box Set to Eritrea and send some fucking food instead. Who the hell needs refried dreams anyways?
Napster is just the beginning...
Your average indy label or low-moderate profile major label deal will net you something around $1-1.50 per CD. If you're so lucky as to have worldwide distribution, you will get about half that (.75 per) for overseas sales.
CD sales are not real music. Live music is real music. World tours and mega-bands live in the fantasy-land of mass-produced, mass-marketed, canned meat. Music is for people, not corporations. If a musician has to make a living playing bars in his hometown then so be it.
As Dr. Seuss says:
This is your brain.
This is your brain on Drugs.
This is your war.
This is your war on Drugs.
Tin foil hats. Mother of mercy, why didn't I think of that?
Yes it is. Hoping for remuneration is OK, but expecting it is too much. Nobody should *expect* remuneration. Everything depends on trust and good will.
There is no supra-legal code (including the US Constitution) which protects intellectual property rights as an end in themselves. The protection afforded artists has been because of the good will of the citizens. If that good will has worn out, then like it or not, heh, the times they are a changin'. (Thanks, Bob)