Re: [PLUG] Reg: You thought you bought software – all you bought was a lie

[Rich Freeman via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

On Thu, Oct 6, 2022 at 1:26 PM K.S. Bhaskar via plug
<plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
>
> This discussion is going in circles around the core issue of ownership, of what and by whom.

Honestly I think we're mostly arguing about definitions.  We mostly
agree on who is allowed to do what when somebody swipes their credit
card at Microcenter to buy a box with software in it.

I agree there is little point in continuing to go back and forth.  I
don't think there was much point in my original email except to vent,
as I realize my views on the topic are likely to be contrary to many
if not almost everybody on the list.

> There is no inherent right to ownership of anything.

I'd go a step further and say there are no inherent rights.  As with
various types of ownership, they are conventions, and not even
universally held ones.

Of course, they are conventions that have great ramifications for how
a society will evolve.  The social conventions that exist today are
just a small subset of all the ones that ever existed, and we are the
children of the societies who absorbed, subjugated, or killed off the
ones with different ideas, just as we bear the genes of the people and
animals who outcompeted diverse others who were their contemporaries.
Private property and copyright are just memes, albeit ones associated
with societies that are capable of building abundant power, food
sources, airliners, and stealth fighters.  Occasionally societies make
the choice to try to figure out if the one has anything to do with the
other...

-- 
Rich
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