Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again) To : comp.programming From : Gerry Quinn Date : Thu Sep 01 2005 12:55 pm In article , david.golden@oceanfree.net says... > Gerry Quinn wrote: > >> Actually, I think you might be persistently confusing > >> "collective ownership" [1] and "no ownership" > >> > >> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism > >> "Communism is a movement based on the principle of communal ownership > >> of all property." > > > > And when everyone owns something, nobody owns it. > > Poppycock. > > If we both jointly own something, it is "mine too". Thus comments about > being able to stroll across land without fear of no-trespassing signs > in the communist system, or the "the air belongs to us all" slogans of > some anti-pollution protesters. Polluters can say the same thing. If the air belongs to a factory owner, then he has the right to emit as much smoke as he wants. If the walker has the right to expect that the land is safe to walk on, the farmer hasn't got the right to keep bears, or grow poisonous plants. When everyone owns something, nobody owns it. That is the truth behind communism, and behind the 'tragedy of the commons'. In the end, the thing 'everybody owns' - assuming it is in sufficient demand - is destroyed or taken into state or other ownership. Or are you saying that people can only do things on land they own that will annoy nobody? Very well, I decree no building on any land anywhere. I own it, right? > But if neither of us can own fields ior fences, I'm perfectly free to > build a fence on a field we both have access to - and you're perfectly > free to try to tear it down or just hop over it. (Or, hey, just copy the > field and fence if you want, assuming it's possible, and then we'd > both have fields with fences) You're making a pseudo distinction, because you haven't given a process for deciding what a 'common owner' can do. Whoever decides that is the real owner. > So... if copyrights exist, and if it is valid to consider them > "property" (your use of the propaganda term "IP" throughout this thread > deliberately glosses over that far from settled debate) and if they > were administered communistically i.e. everyone was "joint owner" of > every copyright, everyone would have a potential say in whether or not > you could pass on information to someone else. If anyone objected to > the passing on of some information, you'd have to refrain from doing so > or come to some agreement with everyone, because everyone's consent > would be necessary. That is a version of software communism. But so is your alternative, unless it is software anarchy, which is worse, and just leads to communism anyway. > If you still can't tell the difference between information freedom > and information communism/capitalism (which are much more like eachother > than like intellectual freedom), then that's your problem. It's your problem that nobody believes your communist propaganda. Relabeling it as something else doesn't change what you are trying to do - commandeer our property in the name of 'The People'. You talk about 'information freedom', which is in fact a particularly disgusting example of the perversion of language by the software communists. The slogan "free as in speech, not free as in beer", so appealing to morons, ignores the fact that the laws governing free speech are precisely those of copyright. - Gerry Quinn .