|
|
|
| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 25 2012 @ 03:36 PM EDT |
>And why should intellectual property rights be respected any less than real
property (i.e., real estate) rights?
Why should intellectual property rights be respected AT ALL?
The U.S. Constitution provides an answer. Unlike "inalienable"
rights--life, liberty, and property--is an "artificial" right,
intolerable if for more than a limited period, and recognized at all only if it
gives some specific benefit to society ("To promote the Progress of Science
and useful Arts").
Granted, the European peonage-society mentality is to create
"nobility" with hereditary privileges which the masses are forever
deprived of. And, in that atmosphere, the exclusive right to collect tolls on,
say, boat traffic on a specific river is just as valid, just as socially useful,
as the exclusive right to collect copyright fees forever.
And granted, certain American families, the Disneys et al, would love to set
themselves up as hereditary aristocracies on the European model -- and there are
certain businesses which would love to become parasites on such an aristocracy.
But whose ox is being gored? I'll happily give up all my interest in my
ancestors' books (some of which are still in print) and architectural
accomplishments (on of which is still a tourist attraction) in order to gain
free access to everyone else's ancestor's thoughts.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 25 2012 @ 03:43 PM EDT |
From one site on
measuring worth the calculation of $5000 in 1860 is the equivalent of
somewhere between $107,000.00 and $17,400,000.00 in 2011's
value.
$12,000 in real estate would ring in between $257,000.00
and $41,700,000.00.
So ... was Lincoln suffering in his time for
having values? Somehow I don't think he was.
You didn't explicitly voice
an opinion on whether you thought Lincoln did well or not, so I thought I'd
provide the above for others to judge by. As opposed to perhaps reading what
you authored following your comment on Lincoln and assuming you meant to
indicate Lincoln fared poorly for his values.
RAS[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: stegu on Thursday, October 25 2012 @ 05:07 PM EDT |
> Why shouldn't I be able to break into your home when
> you aren't there and just take it for myself?
You equate sharing with stealing. It doesn't work
like that, and you know it. I do not think illegal
file sharing is right, and I don't do it, but your
arguments are dated, crude and ineffective.
You really (I mean, really) need to get some more
nuanced arguments if you are going to get anyone to
take you seriously. Read some of the philosophically
sound and well argued texts that point to the benefits
of free sharing of thoughts and ideas, and criticize
those. Don't use the tired old strawman "so you
think it would be OK if I stole your stuff, huh?".
If you want a good book, start with "The Public Domain"
by James Boyle. You can download it for free, without
breaking any laws, and even if you might not agree
with a single word in it, it's still a good read if
you really want to understand what you're up against:
http://www.thepublicdomain.org/
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: FreeChief on Thursday, October 25 2012 @ 07:27 PM EDT |
Why should intellectual property rights be respected less than real
property?
Because it's not real.
— Programmer
in Chief
PS: That's a pun on the word "real". I'll come up with a more
logical argument when you come up with something more logical than a pun on the
word "property". For example, name a property that is shared by IP and
RP.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Tyro on Thursday, October 25 2012 @ 08:01 PM EDT |
I think you need to actually read the GPL license. Any version. It's not that
difficult.
Then if that doesn't answer you, you could try the BSD license, the MIT license,
or even weird ones like the Artistic license. When you've done that, read an
EULA published by some corporation...it almost doesn't matter which one, as they
tend to copy each other. MS and Apple OS licenses are leading contenders.
(This isn't fair, however, as both companies have snuck modifications of the
license terms into security upgrades. Still, even just a plain reading will be
enlightening.)
As a result of which I refuse to use either MS or Apple products. Most people
say "But I've already PAID for this!". And note that when they say
you can return the CDs (do they still give CDs?) with the merchandise for a
refund, the stores usually disagree. Because the store has no direct contact
with the manufacturer, so they would need to get their upstream provider to
accept the return, and the upstream provider would need...well, you get the
idea. There are multiple middlemen, each reluctant to get left holding the bag.
A few extremely persistent people successfully made returns over a decade ago,
but it's my understanding that this was then made more difficult.
OTOH, as I said I haven't dealt with either Apple or MS for over a decade. So I
can't give you current practice. But I know who *I* consider the criminals and
thieves. Compared to major corporations with EULAs, file sharers are saints and
work miracles.
I strongly support just intellectual property rights. But I don't think it
means the same thing you appear to think.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 26 2012 @ 04:39 AM EDT |
"Intellectual property rights" are governments telling me I can't
think or talk or write about something.
I thought that "Thought crime" was universally reviled last decade,
now I know better.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 26 2012 @ 07:42 AM EDT |
And why should intellectual property rights be respected any less
than real property (i.e., real estate) rights?
Because your
"intellectual property right" has the effect of depriving everybody else who has
the means and the wherewithal to utilize the knowledge to which you claim
exclusive possession. The number of people this amounts to has been increasing
throughout history owing to the ingenuity of man in designing devices targeted
at accomplishing this: writing, printing presses, phonorecords, telephony,
digital computing, and now The Internet -- all of the things that "intellectual
property rights" artificially strive to artificially constrain.
With
"real property", the number of people suppressed by the claim to exclusive
possession is rather limited and the nature of the exclusivity is inherent and
absolute, not artificial. There can be only one person excluded from driving a
particular car, one family excluded from living in a particular home, and one
person excluded from eating the food that is otherwise eaten by it
"owner".
As technology advances, this disparity between the effect of
ownership of real property and that of "intellectual property" continually
grows, increasing the societal cost of the latter and decreasing its benefit. It
is inevitable that "intellectual property rights" should diminish over time; the
only issue is the amount of collateral damage its advocates will cause in the
mean time.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 26 2012 @ 10:53 AM EDT |
We live in an age of unprecedented availability of information but we can't use
it. We have intellectual property telling us we can't build on another's work,
we have scientists faking results, we have authoritative sources rewriting
history, etc. There is a great supply of information but we no longer know what
is real or what we can even use. Welcome the the age of Fog.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
|
|
|
|
