Re: FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe to support Digital Restrictions Management
On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 7:24 PM, Richard Hector <richard@walnut.gen.nz> wrote:
> I wouldn't call real estate a form of intellectual property; it's very
> physical. Real, even. On the other hand, I would still treat it
> differently from ordinary property, on the basis that it will continue
> to exist essentially for ever, well beyond the lifetime of the current
> owner. As such, I feel that while some form of 'ownership' is generally
> ok, it should be considered more like custodianship - the current owner
> shouldn't be free to drain it of all its resources, and leave nothing
> for the next.
This is, in fact, a very Godly and Scriptural view. The earth is the
Lord's, and everything in it [1], and people are given the charge of
taking care of it and putting it to work [2]. In the original nation
of Israel, land wasn't sold permanently - in the Year of Jubilee
(every fifty years), land would revert to its owner (based on
descent/inheritance). The price was to be based on the number of years
until then [3], so in effect, land wasn't sold, it was rented.
And yes. The current owner (guardian, caretaker, land-worker) is not
free to drain it of resources, any more than a store manager of a
large chain is free to run the store into the ground.
Ownership comes from work; if you work the ground and produce a crop,
you own the crop. If you pick up a stick and carve it into a depiction
of a bear, you own that statuette. And you can trade that for
something that someone else owns. Creating something mentally comes to
the same thing; you're free to sell that to someone else - or to NOT
sell it, and only read it aloud to that person once. You can, for
instance, write a document and hand it to someone, stating that they
do not own the words in the document but only the paper on which it's
written.
(The doctrine of "first sale" [4] is all about what you're allowed to
do with the paper. For instance, if you sell me a document, I should
have the freedom to burn that paper if I choose, unless there are
other considerations governing that. First Sale has nothing to do with
the words on that paper and what I'm allowed to do with them.)
So really, the problem is not with the notion of ownership of
creation, but the ownership of sale. When you buy a piece of software,
you don't own the entire creative output that caused that software to
be (and a lot of licenses say "This is not sold, it is licensed", just
to be sure). Maybe you want to argue that holding a copy on physical
media entitles you to something; but the problem has never been with
the creation, but the sale.
Chris Angelico
[1] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+24&version=NIV
[2] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1%3A27-28&version=NIV
[3] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+25%3A13-16&version=NIV
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
Reply to: