Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again)
To   : comp.programming
From : David Golden
Date : Fri Sep 02 2005 09:26 pm


> That is the truth behind communism, and behind the 
> 'tragedy of the commons'. 

Historical aside: the tragedy of the commons story supposes there is no
agreed mechanism to decide on proper use of the commons and that it's a
free-for-all. Real commons were considered joint, common, property, not
"not property" and the joint owners had agreed mechanisms for making
decisions about them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

But the tragedy of the commons, even when applicable, applies to scarce
resources. It has not been demonstrated applicable to actual
information - information is naturally non-scarce, you can't "use it
up", consuming it like a finite field of grass.  If I have a copy of
some information, and you make a copy, perceived by some humans to be
the "same" information, I still have my copy.

Now, there is (some) scarcity in the market for information production
and distribution services, but a "tragedy of the commons" may be
avoided there simply by authors continuing to be able to charge for
a load of stuff already discussed in software as service. I have pointed
out that when copyright law is done away with, actual producers of
novel information patterns, including programmers who are any good at
it, will still be able to make a good living.  

> unless it is software anarchy, which is worse, and just leads to
> communism anyway.
 
Well, it's a step up from wildly inaccurately calling people communists
to somewhat inaccurately calling them anarchists, I guess, given I'd
rather be called an anarchist than a communist...

I don't recognise information as having existence apart from physical
medium. When you sell a physical copy of some software to someone, they
should be free to do what they want with it, not have physical property
trumped by intangible crap. 

The following is rather closer to what I believe, a link I already
supplied elsewhere in the thread, though not in reply to one of your
posts, IIRC:

The Libertarian Case  Against Intellectual Property Rights,
Roderick T. Long, 1995
http://libertariannation.org/a/f31l1.html

> The slogan "free as in speech, not free as in beer", so 
> appealing to morons, 

Well I think the moronic part comes from the oversimplification
in the above variant.

"free as in free[libre] speech, not free as in free[gratis] beer."
would be a bit clearer, even without the libre/gratis bits
correcting the deficiencies of the english language.

> ignores the fact that the laws governing free 
> speech are precisely those of copyright.
> 

"Don't those morons know that the laws governing freedom of
people are precisely those of slavery?" 

(legal slavery is a possible law governing aspects of freedom or
otherwise of people, but not the only one, and copyright is a possible
law governing aspects of freedom or otherwise of speech, but not the
only one.)

"Governing", of course, means to keep under control, to regulate.  I
don't dispute that copyright certainly interferes with and "regulates"
free speech, governing communication so the copyright holder can call
upon the law to restrict communication of covered works (hence we see
some software companies buying up copyrights to software and
prohibiting distribution, just to avoid competition), and giving people
seeking power an excuse to invasively monitor all communications, just
in case there's copyright infringement taking place.

You apparently think it is right free speech should thus be governed by
copyright, just as someone might think its right that the freedom of
people should be governed by slavery law. That doesn't make people
morons for opposing copyright law or slavery law.

http://freenet.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=philosophy
"You cannot guarantee freedom of speech and enforce copyright law"

Again, I'm not saying copyright is "as bad as" slavery, though actually
"Intellectual Slavery" is a term used by some people for I"P":
http://wikisource.org/wiki/A_Manifesto_for_the_Intellectual_Freedom_Movement#Part_II%3A_The_Harms_of_the_Intellectual_Slavery_System

.