Re: microsoft vs opensource
On Tue, Mar 04, 2008 at 02:39:25PM -0500, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> steef wrote:
> >Miles Fidelman wrote:
> >>steef wrote:
> >>>
> >>>is there somebody out there who knows the (juridical) implications
> >>>of the kind of "intellectual property" when somebody is going into
> >>>the bush and tries to patent - (and gets this patent indeed) - a
> >>>very valuable indigenous procedée before a court in the Western
> >>>world without the consent of the people who developed that procedée
> >>>over centuries? Is that different, or not, from patenting a very
> >>>valuable script without the consent of the programmer of this
> >>>software? As far as i understand that is where MS often is after.
> >>yup - they're called lawyers (or less polite terms, depending on who
> >>they're working for and how honorable or dishonorable the intentions
> >>of their clients)
> >i understand that. maybe i did not put my question right. i should
> >like a short answer that concerns the content/heart of this matter.
> There is no short answer. There are those who try to patent, copyright,
> or otherwise lock up the rights to things - for lots of different
> reasons; there are those who try to circumvent intellectual property
> restrictions; there are those who believe that such restrictions are
> morally right or wrong; and there's lots of law, regulation, and
> politics to go around.
Stock options don't really exist either. Many people also try to
curcumevent them. Many people believe that they should never have
existed for ideological reasons. They are certainly something you
can buy and sell. Does this make them "intellectual property"?
Copyrights, patents, trademarks, bank notes, stock options and such are
tools that were invented as useful tools. Some of them are occasionally
abused (think of pump&dump frauds). But they are a useful tool
nevertheless.
Some claim that patents (even fewer: copyrights) do more harm than good
and should be removed altogether. It can certainly be claimed today that
in many fieds today patents don't serve a useful purpose: they do not
encourge the inventor not to hide its invention.
People often also claim that copyrights are too potent and last for too
long - that the public will be left with too few texts to use as a
source of insprirations for the next generation of authors.
But then again changing that requires changing the rules. I do not like
some of the current rules, but I respect them as rules. I try to help
change them, but I'm still a law-abiding citizen. And your hopes for the
future still don't change the present.
>
> If you're looking at what to do in a specific instance - be it writing a
> license, challenging a patent, being sued, fighting a suit, sharing
> music (or stealing it, depending on who you're talking to) - the options
> and best path (if any) are specific to the situation, the individuals
> and organizations involved, and what countr(ies) the parties are in.
> And the outcome will be unclear - courts and regulators are notoriously
> unpredictable - though whomever has the deeper pockets has a good chance
> of prevailing.
Now, why would you encourge further distribution of music whose author
forbids you to distribute? You're both doing something illegal,
providing them free publicity and distribution channel[1] *and* most
importantly you don't encourge those artists that do provide their music
under a convinient license. Rings a bell?
About 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people
don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they
are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of
addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in
the next decade.
Look this quote up.
[1] You wouldn't have bought their music anyway, so your illegal copy is
not a lost sale. But your extra publicity does contribute to their sales
of legal copies and in shows.
--
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