Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again)
To   : comp.programming
From : David Golden
Date : Thu Sep 22 2005 12:20 am

> Given that without restrictions, people have few 
> incentives to pay an author.

They only really need one, desire for work by the author. 
 
> But they have been created, 

So was slave ownership, so were colonial trade monopolies. The fact
slave owners lose ownership of their slaves if slave owning is
abolished is no justification for slave ownership rights to exist, nor
reason for much pity for the poor expropriated slave owner, either,
nor reason for the creation of new slaves out of free people - if
you're that worried about the slave owners being expropriated, then you
could simply cease allowing any new slave ownerships, letting
existing owned slaves expire (as they do tend to...).

Of course, we must also remember than rights of copyright and patent
just aren't really all that much like real property.  You attempt to
strengthen the notion it's valid to consider them as closely akin to
real property in the first place by casting all your arguments in terms
of property, throwing around emotive terms like "expropriation".

As Lemley's  paper [1] previously linked shows well, widespread
confusion of various rights you call I"P" with real property because of
your kind's propagandistic choice of terminology lead to all sorts of
invalid generalisations from real property about both their effects and
the justifications for them, invalid generalisations you desire to
perpetuate, apparently (he swiftly puts paid to your earlier "tragedy
of the commons" silliness, for example).  

In the paper, Lemley also actually does a far, far better job putting
forward some honest attempts at justification for various limited
information restriction rights under the law than you have done, funny
enough - I was even quite careful to describe it as an "interesting
link", not say "I agree with it entire" because of that
[1] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=582602

> Why don't you just admit you're a communist and have done with it,
> instead of adding similar disclaimers to every property right?

Because I'm not communist, duh. 

Anyway, I *don't* add "similar disclaimers" to _every_ property or
kinda-sorta-property right. (and the disclaimer about money was not all
that similar to other disclaimers: my arguments with copyright and
patent law aren't the same as argument with unfree currency.  Moneys
will exist as long as it is necessary to streamline exchange in scarce
and rivalrous resources. If they exist of course they should be owned,
if you think scarce and rivalrous resources should be owned.  However,
imposition of law as to what constitutes valid money for transactions
by central authority are just wrong, moneys should be allowed to emerge
freely, not imposed by powers)

> But it's beside the point, which is that the value of 
> IP is not stored in a location but distributed.

Value? Stored??? - Please see http://www.mises.org/story/1349 again.

> Also, it is possible to 
> alter someone's bank account by posting a password and waiting.

Only in a "contributory" indirect fashion at most (I note in passing
you'd also almost certainly have to post the information of the account
the password was associated with for alteration in any reasonable time,
and assuming there's people willing to interfere with the interest of
the account holder and bank) -  Deliberate compromise of a secret of
the password enabling unauthorised modifications of the bank account
might well be held by some to be tortious interference with contract*
obligations of the bank and account holder. On the whole, the legal
issues have not much to do with copyright, just ordinary secrets law
stuff that will likely continue to exist in law well after the
abolition of copyright. 

I argue much less vehemently against secrets law. On disclosure, the
password has still ceased to BE a secret, it's not "owned". If I think
it's a pretty word I could presumably tattoo it on my forehead with
impunity, or sing it from the mountaintops, barring copyright existing
over it - the bank and account holder can't "put the genie back into
the bottle" - even if they have remedies against a tortfeasor as above,
if they want a new shared secret, they pick a new damn password, they
don't "own" the old password information post-disclosure!

(* In many, even most, cases, there'll also be direct issues of
negligence and breach of contract between the bank and the account
holder - I've never seen a bank account contract that didn't have a
"you undertake to keep your PIN secret" clause. To keep secret status,
reasonable efforts need to have been taken to keep the secret, that is
as it should be.)

.