Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again) To : comp.programming From : Randy Howard Date : Sat Aug 27 2005 08:55 pm David Golden wrote (in article ): > Randy Howard wrote: > >> In your loose analogy, Ford, GM, BMW, etc. would be >> the one complaining about the copy of the car, not you. > > Hey, so do music distribution monopoly holders now that their monopolies > are unenforceable. Musicians and composers who have any sense can > still make a decent living. Car designers could still make a decent > living in the presence of magic car cloning rays (which are probably > only a matter of time. At the quantum level, there are the no-cloning > theorems, but at the macroscopic level, you certainly don't care > if a car and its clone are very quantum-state similar, only that > they are similar to a certain level of lumped approximation, so > replicators are merely an engineering problem now.) Of course, those with replicators would be very careful to charge for their services, and not allow people to replicate replicators, requiring them to be paid for instead. :-) > And how about the "how to drive" thing? - > software is a very precise teaching of instructions for someone else's > machine. Not for "someone else's machine", but for the one it is licensed to run upon by the vendor. > (like a set of glasses enhances your vision, your computer > enhances your logical/mathematical ability Or worsens it, depending upon how you use it. A computer is not a magical tool that makes everyone smarter. Usenet alone is ample proof of that. > - I or anyone else of normal > intelligence could run an x86 binary, at least when printed out has a > hexdump, given a pen and paper and an x86 reference, totally unaided by > computer... though it would be rather boring to do.) And it would be a lot simpler to get a copy of Sourcer or something, but in the end, you would still have a bunch of very hard to read automated disassembly, which wouldn't be of much value. You would be much better off with the source code. Never mind that you might be breaking the law. Clearly that doesn't matter to you either. >>> I thus simply regard it as best to consider the physical substrates >>> of particular copies of information as property. >> >> Not all property is physical. Perhaps you have heard of >> "intellectual property rights"? > > Yes, that is usually a catch-all term used by those who wish to muddy > the waters of all sorts of different rights, trying to making it more > difficult to argue for trademark but against copyright, for example, > often wrongly asserting that if you're against one I"P" right, you're > against them all. So you have heard of them. What are the "physical substrates" of IP? Why should you have access to them without compensating the inventor(s)? >> I love the way people throw around the word 'wrong' when they >> really mean 'my opinion'. You thinking it is wrong, does not >> make it so for the general population, > > In my country's history, thousands of people are recorded to have > died in the battle of Cul Dreimne against the world's first recorded > copyright law. Good for them. At least they had a spine back then. Try to find 200 people willing to go to battle (with actual weapons) against a copyright law today, then get back to me. > Don't think the "general population" will just > blindly support someone's claimed "right" to destroy their freedom of > information by "owning" information forever: especially not since the > deal was supposed to be a monopoly for a "limited time", but those in > power are happy to render that meaningless (See Eldred vs. Ashcroft.). You can argue about the length of time all you want, but the time period doesn't matter when the Stallman crowd is not trying to shorten the period to something more reasonable, he's trying to eliminate it completely. > The "general population" isn't necessarily stupid and is quite capable > of deciding deal's off, copyright law is wrong, if they want to. I keep thinking that. Then I look at all the power government has over the people (acquiesced by the sheeple) and what the people are willing to put up with, and I don't see it. The best you can say is that people are willing to break the law in massive numbers, but none of them will really fight for what they believe in, or we wouldn't have millions (billions) of people paying such a large percentage of their income to a bunch of elected fools to spend as they wish. -- Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR) .