Re: [LAD] RAUL?

Hey! I agree with most of the things you say. So all I have to do is just make my point a little bit more clear. GPL is necessary in the world of copyright. It is, thus, founded in this sense. The copyright claim in itself - that ideas can be property - is unfounded. The general claim - that implementations of ideas can be property - is, in my view, also unfounded when the implementation itself is just a collection of ideas, or, putting it more broadly, *when the implementation is an immaterial object*. The concept of property, made towards anything immaterial, makes little sense and is always found on some artificial unnecessary grounds, whereas property of physical objects is a concept based on necessary grounds - the scarcity of physical objects (and thus the need for individual control of those objects). An idea of a chair is implemented in a physical object. The concept of property is applicable to the physical implementation of a physical object. An ideas of an author are implemented in a physical book and that physical book can be property. But when the book becomes a file, the file stops being a physical object, to which the concept of property can be applied. Strictly speaking, a file is still a physical object, but it is so small and so cheap to duplicate, that it can effectively be considered as non-scarce. But usually people get convinced fairly easy that copyright is an artificial limitation. So any copyright/IP discussion really comes down to speaking about how copyright as an artificial limitation can be founded. To put it simply: *why does one think copyright is needed?* The only argument I hear is that without copyright people will not do creative work. And this argument is weak on many points, not to mention that it is has little empirical evidence. The opposite though - that creativity will flourish without copyright - has a vast amount of empirical evidence. Just to prevent some rightful criticism - it is true that demolition of copyright law might decrease creativity on part of those people, who were motivated in a very specific way. However, I would argue that it will in turn increase creativity on part of those people, who were de-motivated by copyright law, and my argument would be that the amount of those people is much larger and that their output would be much more valuable. -- Louigi Verona http://www.louigiverona.ru/