From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@piclab.com)
Date: Tue Feb 15 2000 - 11:42:13 MST
> << only seem to be a "rip-off" because you grew up in a culture where
> legislators _defined_ derivative art as "theft". They did such a good
> job of propagandizing this idea that it seems "natural" >>
>
> Hey watch it. For years artist were totally unprotected by laws that
> protected every other practise. Now we are at*least* in the position of
> having the OPPORTUNITY to sue people who steal from art and pretend it's
> theirs to sell.
See? You made my point: your mind is warped by the rhetoric of IP
law. Recast that sentence to say the same thing from the other point
of view: "For years artists did not enjoy the monopoly privilege
granted to some other practices...now at least they have lobbied for
those grants and can be as litigious as the rest." And the "pretend
it's theirs to sell" comment is disingenuous: you know as well as I
do that copyright prevents them from selling it even when they freely
acknowledge where it came from.
The very concept that ideas can be "mine" or "yours" is bizarre,
unnatural, and recent. And contrary to your assertion, it did _not_
apply to everyone but recording artists--it still doesn't, for
example, apply to mathematicians who may labor for years on a proof
and do not claim ownership of it. It does not apply, for example,
to the shapes of letters in a font design--those are public domain
and may be implemented by anyone (though the _name_ of a font can
be a protected trademark). It does not apply to collections of data
that may have taken years of research to collect if there is no
particular creative expression in them (phone books, for example,
can be copied and sold routinely).
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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