Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again) To : comp.programming From : David Golden Date : Mon Sep 19 2005 11:08 pm Gerry Quinn wrote: > Sure, but that is why it fits that category. > Nope. If both of us build similar planets in separate star systems, their similarities are not rivalrous either, even if the operation takes far more energy than the current mediocre human culture (definitely small c there...) has at its disposal. More practically, if it takes me 3 months to painstakingly make a copy of a book, information in the book is still not rivalrous. Each copy of some information, being physical, might be, and is, rivalrous. And hey, I don't argue against property rights over particular copies of information. "Information" just does not exist independent of physical substrate. Ever. Allowing people to treat "information" as if it is an owned thing is allowing the destruction of the physical property rights of all of us, rights long established first and foremost because physical stuff IS rivalrous. > J.K.Rowling is presumably a dick for wanting royalties, so. For wanting to restrict others, maybe. Not for wanting to be paid. > In your world, I'd call her a dick for writing the books > in the first place. Well, that's pretty idiotic. I'm going to guess your entire argument is "she's undermining us control-freaks unwilling to work unless we get our copy monopolies. Waah." > The usual moronic argument for communism. Soak the rich and > distribute their goods and you maximise utility, as far as it goes, > with goods ALREADY EXISTING that can be expropriated. Information CANNOT BE EXPROPRIATED BY DUPLICATION. The notion doesn't make sense. expropriated: Taken out of the possession of another and transferred to your own use, often without permission. You just do not "take" 'information' as if it were physical stuff. It's not. > I have said it's a good way, and that you > have provided no plausible alternative that will provide anything like > the same results. Why on earth would we even desire "the same results"? Copyright is a bizarre welfare subsidy. Grants are more usually considered appropriate for dealing with positive externalities (and you don't get more much more positive than with information), property rights for negative externalities. Yet with I"P" we have the very odd situation of property rights being used for something with predominantly or entirely positive externalities, and people like you get so confused and/or addicted to power that you apparently start to think it's some sort of natural right that it should be thus. Here's another interesting paper by Mark. A. Lemley: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=582602 > You forget that Rowling would have to serve fries for a living if sjhe > couldn't get royalties. Well, that would really depend on how good her work was. > Your economic arguments about 'net users' are garbage > too because you are not looking at market value. Do you mean market price? You're wrong even if so, but here's a link about what value means: http://www.mises.org/story/1349 All along, it's sounded to me like you subscribe to some old labour theory of value: hey, maybe *you're* a closet marxist! > Because those who create ars gratia artis are usually the shit > artists, who have no alternative. Handy statement if you ever need to be discredited in the eyes of actual artists, that. Well, thanks for playing. .