Re: [PLUG] Free Software

[zuzu <sean.zuzu@gmail.com>]

On 10/25/07, Matthew Rosewarne <mrosewarne@inoutbox.com> wrote:
>
> It's not actually enough to provide your source code, since your copyrights
> still apply to it.  What makes software Free is a license that explicitly
> grants (at least) the four kinds of freedom to whom you provide your work.
> It's also important to note that "copyleft" is just a playful term for using
> copyright in an unusual way, not an opposition to copyright.

the GPL is really just a (clever) legal hack that turns copyright
against itself.

if it weren't for copyright (and the DMCA, which generally outlawed
reverse-engineering) the GPL wouldn't be necessary in the first place.

not to mention that compiling code, primarily used to obscure its
operation, is an antiquated practice as well; the complexity of
distributed execution and modification (especially
introspection/reflection) requires end-user interpretation rather than
supply-side pre-compilation.

when I'm feeling flippant, I outright blame Bill Gates since his
primary contribution to computer culture was really only convincing
businessmen that software could be sold in boxes as physical widgets,
which is the paradigm to which they were accustomed and made for an
easy transition.  of course, software is not a physical object and has
very different qualities from physical widgets; hence the argument
which continues to this day.


> the only way for them to be
> protected from unauthorised copying was to equate them to "private property".
> I think it's fairly obvious that thoughts aren't physical items that can be
> stolen or destroyed, so the protections given to owned property don't really
> fit.  Therefore, what we would need to improve the situation would be a
> change in the legal basis of copyright, trademarks, patents, and other ideas
> towards a set of rights that is more appropriate to their nature.
>

the phrase "intellectual property" is a recent (circa 1990s) marketing
term (ala "luntzspeak") to conflate the government-granted monopolies
of copyright, patent, and trademark with a completely different legal
domain -- private property.  for example, the legal definition of
"theft" requires "denial of use"; sharing copy of something literally
makes more of it and doesn't deny anyone its use.

patents, copyrights, and trademarks are nothing more than a legal
privilege -- a kind of corporate welfare/subsidy in a corporatist
"mixed economy".
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