drew Roberts wrote:
On Wednesday 30 June 2010 10:43:41 Dave Phillips
wrote:
Whatever you or I might believe about copyright
law, the FSF
clearly understands that it protects projects like Linux. Money is not
the only issue in the misappropriation of what is called intellectual
property. The FSF perceives stuff like Linux as intellectual property,
You really should not put words into their mouths. They are strongly opposed
to the term "intellectual property."
Well, at least RMS:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html
Yeh, I should have thought twice about that remark. I know RMS's stand,
I've read that paper.
In all things GNU he is The Man, but I don't agree with him on everything
entitled to
copyright protection by law, and they enforce action against
violators of the GPL, and with the same justification taken by the
greedy record companies. It's law, and it applies to the good and bad
alike.
Well, the freedoms they want for code would exist without copyright, but since
we have copyright, they use copyright to protect those freedoms. (Their
thinking from what I can tell.)
The point isn't that the freedoms wouldn't exist without it. As you say,
those freedoms can be protected by copyright law.
Obviously too, and often sadly, laws outlast their utility. My major
beef with current copyright is its terms of extension and renewability.
I won't say that it guts the whole notion of the public domain, but it
no longer functions to guarantee its replenishment. Thankfully CC and
other such licenses do ensure a rich public sources of
copyright-unencumbered works.
Best,
dp