Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again)
To   : comp.programming
From : David Golden
Date : Wed Sep 07 2005 01:14 am

Gerry Quinn wrote:

> The ideas you are proposing are communist in their 
> essence - deal with it.

No they're not - deal with it.  

> And don't waste peoples' time with the 
> assertion that you are promoting some kind of 'anarchism' instead -

Heh.  _I_ didn't! You're the one who came up with "software anarchism"
when you found that "communism" wouldn't stick. I then commented
I'd rather be inaccurately called anarchist than inaccurately called
communist.

Here's that link again...
"The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights"
by Roderick T. Long
http://libertariannation.org/a/f31l1.html
(there are various mirrors if you google it...)

>> > why future Cipros should be developed.
>> Because there'd be demand for them.
> But no reward for the inventor.  So why bother?

No reward?  non-exhaustively:
1) A new drug would exist for the inventor too.
2) First to market advantage
3) demand existing to be satisfied, a new market established.
4) being paid to develop a new drug by people who need it

>> > [More irrelevant quotes.  I do not recall ever hearing that Robert
>> > Heinlein placed his SF books in the public domain.]
> Heinlein's actions show that either he didn't mean what you imply him
> to mean,

I'm not claiming Heinlein was a nice guy.  People gave him the power to
copyright his books. Why not happily take advantage of those who allow
themselves to be taken advantage of? If they took away power, he would
have no particular right to demand continuation of that power based on
merely the fact he previously had it.

> And Jefferson doesn't seem to have had issues with provisions for IP
> in the US Constitution.  

[Of course, Jefferson was packed off to France where he couldn't
interfere too much until the federal constitution was a done deal
anyway.]

There are no provisions for I"P" in the US constitution, the section
that comes closest grants power to congress to create certain exclusive
rights-  A1S8C8:  "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,
by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive
Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"

It does NOT say that congress is obliged to grant those rights under
some half-baked theory of "rightful" ownership of information. Notions
of "rightful" ownership were dismissed in 1834 in the Wheaton vs.
Peters case. It does NOT say such rights have to be "just like real
property" if granted.

Later (late 1789), with the constitution (1788-1789) as a given he was
stuck with, Jefferson held that there should have been an explicit
concrete time limit on any monopolies granted under the constitution
encoded into the bill of rights (presumably to counter exactly what we
have seen, congress using the vagueness of "limited time" to extend
copyright indefinitely into a form of information ownership)
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff0950.htm

So. Jefferson was in favour of strict time controls on intellectual
monopolies - if those monopolies existed. And he would have liked to
encode an explicit time limit into the constitution (=> constitutional
amendment required for each increase...)


> But we can safely assume that Jefferson clearly also saw the 
> merits in granting the temporary monopolies known as patents.

Hm... Well, he was ambivalent at best if you ask me:

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html

"Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them,
as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility,
but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience
of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody.   Accordingly,
it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we
copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law,
gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other
countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and
personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that
these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society;
and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of
invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.

Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of natural
right, but for the benefit of society, I know well the difficulty of
drawing a line between the things which are worth to the public the
embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which are not."

.