Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again) To : comp.programming From : Gerry Quinn Date : Tue Sep 20 2005 11:34 am In article , david.golden@oceanfree.net says... > Gerry Quinn wrote: > > > J.K.Rowling is presumably a dick for wanting royalties, so. > > For wanting to restrict others, maybe. Not for wanting to be paid. Someone who wants to be paid, and isn't a dick, wants an economic and legal system that encourages it. > > 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." Someone who writes and distributes their literature for free ('vanity publishing' as writers call it) isn't undermining anything in particular. Rowling isn't a dick. As she says in early interviews: "It was my life's ambition to see a book I had written on a shelf in a bookshop." Note the last syllable. > > 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. I never said it did. I said goods (such as IP rights) can be expropriated. Your argument is as nonsensical as saying money can't be expropriated because a data register in your bank's computer still exists. Sure it does, but its value is gone. > > 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"? Because we don't want to live in a communist hell-hole. > Here's another interesting paper by Mark. A. Lemley: > http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=582602 Mostly a whinge about terminology. > > 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. No, it would depend on how saleable her work was, which under your scheme is likely to be close to zero irrespective of quality. > > 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 What's your point? You equated the two concepts and munged them with a third, and now you moan because I did not write an essay separating them in detail. > All along, it's sounded to me like you subscribe to some > old labour theory of value: hey, maybe *you're* a closet marxist! That's a typical line of defence from your kind. But nobody is fooled. > > 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. All the artists you have quoted wrote for money - why's that? Sure, many might have written something without the incentive, though whether it would have been for the benefit of art per se is questionable. One doesn't have to go so far as Samuel Johnson to know that very few real artists are trying to expand some vapid concept of 'Art' (which largely exists in the minds of critics anyway). - Gerry Quinn .