| Matthew Rosewarne on 26 Oct 2007 01:56:28 -0000 |
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On Thursday 25 October 2007, zuzu wrote: > 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. While the DMCA is an obvious travesty of law, copyright is a tool, like a knife, a shovel, or processed uranium. The GPL doesn't do anything to harm copyright, it simply provides an alternate model of using it. If there were no copyright, i.e. everything is in the public domain, it would be entirely possible for someone to take your code, improve it, and not give it back. Unlike the public domain, the GPL isn't giving the code away, it's protecting the code from being kept secret, and that protection comes from copyright. > 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. I can't say I'd agree with that, considering how few systems compile the programs they run. I also wouldn't agree that pre-compilation is obsolete or done for the purpose of obscurity, since it is an essential part of making code actually run, particularly at adequate speed. While introspection and reflection are great, they're hardly the exclusive domain of interpreted languages, as you can use those features with pre-compiled languages. > 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. Bill Gates should be respected as a brilliant innovator. Not as a programmer, but as a businessman. He managed to get people to pay for software that was inferior to what, at the time, typically came with the hardware at no additional cost. > 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. WIPO was started in 1967, so it's a little older than that. > patents, copyrights, and trademarks are nothing more than a legal > privilege -- a kind of corporate welfare/subsidy in a corporatist > "mixed economy". You shouldn't discount the idea of copyright and trademark entirely (not so sure about patents...), since they are not only useful for large corporations but also individuals and small organisations with new ideas. If the small competitor invests in some new idea, copyright protects them from their larger competitor, who may already have factories, supply lines, retailers, from simply copying that idea and dominating the market. Trademark also prevents the economic equivalent of identity theft, where somebody attempts to be you in order to steal your customers. The problems come not so much from the ideas themselves, but more from the way they have been implemented in our current body of law. Attachment:
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