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The history of copy right also mirrors the transition from societies where
most people only dealt with a few other people during their whole lives to
the mass culture of today. Whereas there were cities in the past, most
people lived in villages until the edge modern times. Babylon only had
fifty thousand people and Athens weighed in at twenty thousand. The
first truly large city would be Rome at half a million.
Innovations that would now be copy righted were made and either copied
widely by those whom the inventor could not have profited from under the
then current economic system or given under secrecy only to one's
apprentices.
We live in a mass society and have to bend over backwards so that the
innovator can enjoy the proceeds from his or her work. But another
complicating factor is the rise of the corporation who is treated as
an individual by the U.S. legal system with the right to copy right.
This right, when exercised by the corporation, frequently leaves the
actual innovator out in the cold while someone else gains the receipts
from his or her work.
We know how much loyalty corporations show to mere minions as opposed
to executives. To some this creates an ethical justification for
stealing software. One is not stealing from the actual innovator but
from those who insist upon profiteering from his or her work. There
is a limit to how much should be garnered from the public and they
have cheerfully exceeded that limit.
There is always a continum between drab socialism and rampant capitalism.
Somewhere on that continum is a line which represents a fair compromise
between the two extreme positions and between the elements of a given
society. We are clearly nowhere near that line at this time in history.
It's still stealing but it's stealing from other thieves.
bs
On Fri, 26 Oct 2007, zuzu wrote:
> On 10/26/07, Art Alexion <art.alexion@verizon.net> wrote:
> > On Thursday 25 October 2007 11:12:17 Sean C. Sheridan wrote:
> > > Many people may not understand that you may charge for your software and
> > > still have it fall under the category of "free software"
> >
> > I'm not sure I understand how that coexists with "The freedom to redistribute
> > copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2)."
> >
> > While a scenario may exist where entity A sells program-which-is-open-source,
> > but allows others to distribute it for free (or for a charge), that doesn't
> > seem like a real world scenario.
> >
>
> because selling copies of something which has a virtually zero cost of
> duplication is an incredibly foolish business model, unless you're
> appealing to government intervention/welfare in the form of copyright.
>
> selling "units" of a mass-produced item is a relic of a manufacturing
> economy. in a knowledge economy, it's selling the _creativity_ of
> _people_ that's the scarce/valuable commodity. instead of buying
> "things" we need to focus on buying "people" in the form of creative
> labor (vis-a-vis opportunity cost) to invent _new_ features and
> functionality. last I checked, your brain is the only one of its
> kind.
> ___________________________________________________________________________
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