Hej!
Believe it or not I just looked into a book before I get crazy here ;-) And now I am certain. A famous professor in this field talks exclusively about "ownership".
But what you explain to me is so sound!!! Now I am completely confused. I recognized already that the understanding of ownership differs between you (the list members) and me.
You're talking about information, which is a far cry from property.
Well, but software is more than that. And if I just hold a authorship in software I would not be able to protect the "excecutable" part of the software, or?
Copyright is only a special privilege granted to the way one expresses information, not the information itself.
If I follow you than copyright (in authorship) and ownership do not fit, right? But a copyright in software works like a right to "ownership", or a means "ownership", doesn't it?
Copyright wasn't designed as a property right, quite self-consciously because it participates in the realm of information.
Yes, but that had to change! Consider my "information on supply" argument.
After all, I think my freedom argument is still sound. You reject it because of good reason. I stick to it.
But now I have to sleep!
Axel
Seth Johnson seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org schrieb am 21.04.04 23:02:08:
Axel,
You're talking about information, which is a far cry from property.
Copyright is only a special privilege granted to the way one expresses information, not the information itself.
Copyright wasn't designed as a property right, quite self-consciously because it participates in the realm of information. Copyright was designed to foster the greater dissemination of useful information by granting authors the privilege of being paid for each static copy of their original expression that's produced.
Information production is a good bit different from other forms, particularly in the kind of product that's produced. Ideality is not the sort of thing that can been "owned" in the first place, because it's inherently shared as soon as it's communicated -- and when it comes to logic and algorithms, you're definitely comfortably in the realm of ideality.
You're concerned about the producer's ability to exact value for her labor. There are many ways to do that; they don't necessarily require overturning age-old understanding and common sense regarding the character of information as such.
Seth
Axel Schulz wrote:
Hej!
Believe it or not I just looked into a book before I get crazy here ;-) And now I am certain. A famous professor in this field talks exclusively about "ownership".
But what you explain to me is so sound!!! Now I am completely confused. I recognized already that the understanding of ownership differs between you (the list members) and me.
It will become clearer and clearer as the tide turns, and all the sheep on our side will finally recognize that only principle will stand against the forces trying to screw things for the rest of us in the area of exclusive rights policy. Richard Stallman is the single most important part of the information freedom movement, because he has been a rock, staking out the correct principles for twenty years.
That turn in the tide is very likely to be happening very soon. I predict that the opening up of the discourse regarding software patents which has recently been accomplished in the EU by ffii and others, will be the floodgate for the change.
Seth
You're talking about information, which is a far cry from property.
Well, but software is more than that. And if I just hold a authorship in software I would not be able to protect the "excecutable" part of the software, or?
Copyright is only a special privilege granted to the way one expresses information, not the information itself.
If I follow you than copyright (in authorship) and ownership do not fit, right? But a copyright in software works like a right to "ownership", or a means "ownership", doesn't it?
Copyright wasn't designed as a property right, quite self-consciously because it participates in the realm of information.
Yes, but that had to change! Consider my "information on supply" argument.
After all, I think my freedom argument is still sound. You reject it because of good reason. I stick to it.
But now I have to sleep!
Axel
If I follow you than copyright (in authorship) and ownership do not fit, right? But a copyright in software works like a right to "ownership", or a means "ownership", doesn't it?
If it wouldn't work, Microsoft would not be paying their patent lawyers for ensuring property rights. So far I can't argue against your *legalistic* claims, but on the other hand, that doesnt answer the question if you morally should have the freedom to own software (your proposition was, yes, you should).
There's a german paper (Karsten Weber, Philosophische Grundlagen und moegliche Entwicklungen der Open-Source- und Free-Software-Bewegung) that describes libertarianism thought underlying in free software development, and has a section on property. The author shows that, while aware of the two edged property term in libertarianism, there are (philosophically) quite well grounded opinions that IPRs or Swpats may be "morally illegitimate". And I think that's what law should be about: make your and others' rights "morally legitimate".
That's Stallmans argumentation, and it is true even if you listen to Eric Raymond, who is arguing from a technological point of view.
You may find the paper online at http://think-ahead.org/
Believe it or not I just looked into a book before I get crazy here ;-) And now I am certain. A famous professor in this field talks exclusively about "ownership".
I'm not sure which professors you are relying on ;-) but I know one whose recent remarks fit quite well into your copyright/ownership-thing. Stanford's Lawrence Lessig's comments might the same apply to software; you may get some valuable input from his theses. (BTW, he's just boarded the FSF).
<quote lessig> The copyright warriors are right: A copyright is a kind of property. It can be owned and sold, and the law protects against its theft. Ordinarily, the copyright owner gets to hold out for any price he wants. Markets reckon the supply and demand that partially determine the price she can get. But in ordinary language, to call a copyright a "property" right is a bit misleading, for the property of copyright is an odd kind of property. Indeed, the very idea of property in any idea or any expression is very odd (...) But how, and to what extent, and in what form -- the details, in other words -- matter. To get a good sense of how this practice of turning the intangible into property emerged, we need to place this "property" in its proper context. </quote lessig>
It is around page 80, I'm not sure about my txt-converted file :-) You may find other formats online, too: http://free-culture.org/.
Daniel
On Thu, 2004-04-22 at 13:39, Daniel Zimmel wrote:
I'm not sure which professors you are relying on ;-) but I know one whose recent remarks fit quite well into your copyright/ownership-thing. Stanford's Lawrence Lessig's comments might the same apply to software; you may get some valuable input from his theses. (BTW, he's just boarded the FSF).
Afaik he means that you own the monopoly license, that's the property you own, the license, not the expression/idea/whatever.