On Fri, 2007-02-23 at 11:46 +0100, Patrice Dumas wrote: > On Fri, Feb 23, 2007 at 04:39:16AM -0500, Lyvim Xaphir wrote: > > > > NOT if the intellectual property was produced by work that was not > > freely given. If the programmer creates original product (IP) thru > > his/her own effort and work, then that person has the right to the > > fruits of that labor. This is basic and not hard to understand. > > The fact that freely available non rival goods maximize welfare > is also easy to understand. Once again, I don't disagree. But the difference is wether the intellectual property was freely given or not. We have all seen freely given intellectual property maximize the general welfare, but that's not the issue here. If you are advocating stealing intellectual property for the general welfare, then that's clearly criminal. Truthfully I don't think you are or would advocate such a thing, but there are those here who are. > So here there is clearly a possible > opposition on normative issues. The political/ideological issue is > on how to balance the freedom to license against welfare maximisation > since both principles are antagonist in the case of non rival goods. Which is simple enough; the freedom to license lies with the authors of the work. Period. Any attempt to remove that right or force licensing on the authors of the work is a criminal action against the authors. > > Which I agree with in principle, with that statement taken by itself; > > but you are discussing a different type of regulation. The situation > > I'm concerned with is when the programmer wishes to profit from his > > work; which is a form of regulation, but again I don't think that's what > > you mean here. > > Indeed, what I call regulation here is what is commonly understood in > the field of social choice economy. It is the action of a collective > body to set rules. Setting rules and forcing rules on others is two entirely different things. I'm concerned with the latter (and I give you the benefit of the doubt that you are only talking about the former.) > > > My point is that if the person originates the work, then they > > automatically have the rights to that work, and as such they also have > > the intrinsic right to license it any way they like. It's their work. > > It's their right. This right is forcibly taken from them in the case of > > forced licensing, which is presently occurring within the context of a > > false-freedom ideology. > > You are saying that freedom to keep rights on intelectual production > is the highest principle (above welfare maximization, at least). That's > a view, but other people may disagree. I am not stating my personnal view > here, just explaining that a way to understand this opposition is to > state it that way. I understand. But...the assumption you start from in the above paragraph is that it's an EITHER OR situation with regard to intellectual production "rights". It's not. The current IT universe is diverse and today we have freely given intellectual property which is under the jurisdiction of the GPL, and we also have other differently-licensed intellectual properties which work together with the GPL properties. There's a wide variety of rights available. Within a _current status quo there will ALWAYS be freely-given intellectual production _and_ profit-oriented intellectual production. Currently they work together fine, and the MARKET is the deciding factor about what is used and what is not used. We have different people, different organizations and different financial needs all being served by different licensing solutions. The criminal action comes in when a self-appointed closed ideological group attempts to force their licensing scheme on others against their will by virtue of their level of control over the kernel. When THEY think THEY can unilaterally decide what is right or wrong (taking that decision away from the great unwashed, the users, the Market). As I've stated before, such criminal actions are consequences of socialism. Kernel development should be strictly within the domain of technical dominion, and should have nothing to do with ideology. Ideology is the purview of the user. That has been the key to Ubuntu's success; they understand that principle. They trust the users to make the correct decisions. If the developers want to write code under the authority of technical merit, fine. If they want to march up and down the roads in black robes as the New Flagellants, beating themselves with chains and cursing the dissenters and the New Jews, that's fine too. But PICK ONE. > > > Currently ideas cannot be protected, > > > > > > This is your view and in my view it's false. There are consequences > > today for stealing intellectual property and many people have felt the > > legal brunt of those consequences. I don't agree with things like the > > Ideas, knowledge cannot be protected. (grin) You keep saying that and I will keep disagreeing. :) I'm telling you that there are people in jail now for violation of intellectual property law. Perhaps we should extend the discussion to the nature of protection? If we both decide that protection is possible at the point of a gun, then we both agree that indeed intellectual property is indeed being protected today as we speak. > Reusing knowledge and ideas cannot be prosecuted. Galileo would disagree with you. As would a number of other prominent individuals living (or dying) during the Enlightenment. > The fields of intellectual property are innovation > (through patents), trademark, copyright (for art and software > representations), commercial secrets. Exceptions are entering now and > then (like genetic codes, software patents that may protect some ideas > that are not really innovations, informations stored in database), The genetics I DO NOT agree with. Genetics represents already-existant information (prior to the genesis of human technology) and therefore has not been authored by an individual; so to me the copyright of an existing gene should be rendered criminal. The processes in the probing and manipulation of genes are rightfully intellectual property, but the genomes themselves should be considered outside that domain. They are already "owned", in a sense, and do not represent work involved in their creation by humanity. You could almost say that they were already there, were freely given, and now should be under a sort of "genetic GPL" license. The creation of a new gene would be rightfully considered intellectual property. Clearly there are abuses of intellectual property licensing. My position is that abuses are occurring in not just one arena, but also in increasingly socio-fascist sectors of the IT world. Forced licensing is definitely an abuse and an affront to real freedom. It's just as criminal as patenting a part of the human genome. > but basically all you read in a book cannot be protected by the book > author. The copyright protects the wording, not the ideas. > > -- > Pat If a man's patent holds for a number of years on his ideas for a successful invention, then no matter what the interpretations may be, his ideas have been protected and he profits from that successful invention. The synopsis is that his ideas were protected from others for fear of lawsuit or criminal prosecution. LX -- °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° A Kernel Of Socialism greatunwashed: module license 'great_unwashed' taints kernel. ich: no version for "unwashed_register_device" found: kernel tainted. Symbol usb_register_driver is being used by a non-GPL module, which will not be allowed in the future Please see the file Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt in the kernel source tree for more details. °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
