ownership, intellectual property, copyright .. patent. now there's an interesting one. Pay a fee and for a time you own exclusive rights to make something. for a period of time, until it expires. Can't see the big companies being happy about that! not everything is weighed toward the corporations after all. So now we can all go buy cheap, generic asprin rather than have some pharmacuetical company charging like wounded bulls for a bit of pain relief but why can't they own it forever? they must be sitting there saying 'it ain't fair!' <pout> protection offers encouragement for someone to produce, but it also offers protection to 'society' (that's ALL of us) in making sure competition can occur after the first bloke off the blocks developed the product and made himself a few bob. I dont see that I am automatically entitled to what dead relatives leave behind .. so you won't find me anyware near the fracas after the funeral, it not healthy all that biterness and rivalry generated by the greedy vultures. not everything is fair, nor will it ever be. Copyright laws here in Oz tightened up to give photographers and amazing set of enviable ownership rights. Then for some reason the photographers en mass did nothing with those rights, fearful that if they excersized them, the consumer would just go to another photographer who was prepared to waive those rights! In time, the government led the charge against those rights as they were being stung by the cost of aquiring images and graphics, and the companies chucked in behind them and when the dust settled we found the laws changed to back where the comissioning customer again owns the images. Great. So for a few short years we had exactly what photographers dreamed of and we did nothing with this funny world we live in k
