Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again)
To   : comp.programming
From : Gerry Quinn
Date : Sun Sep 18 2005 12:20 pm

In article <%ZVWe.15633$R5.916@news.indigo.ie>, 
david.golden@oceanfree.net says...
> Gerry Quinn wrote:
> 
> > As with other property rights.
> 
> Nope. _I_ don't start out with the assumption any property right is
> valid.  
> 
> However, real physical property rights are somewhat justifiable: scarce
> resources can be "used up" and are rivalrous.
> 
> Information is used without consumption, copied without being taken.
> 
> With information, there is no need to devise a a property system to
> apportion a scarce resource, whether a capitalist or communist property
> system (your apparent failure to grasp that communism is a property
> system also notwithstanding). The resource is not rivalrous in the
> first place.

The conclusion that there is no need to devise a property system does 
not follow at all from the assertion that information is 'non-
rivalrous' in the specific sense that it can be copied with very low 
expenditure of free energy.

The potential market value of goods to potential creators has an 
influence on the likelihood of their creation, and the copying of 
information-based goods certainly affects their market value.  Insofar 
as such goods have any value to people at large, therefore, the 
devisement of a property scheme in order to encourage creation is a 
reasonable proposition, your attempt at a false syllogism 
notwithstanding.

- Gerry Quinn

.