From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Thu Jul 18 2002 - 07:58:17 MDT
From: Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com>
>> (Brian D Williams <talon57@well.com>):
>
>> I agree, We just disagree on whether copyright law is unjust or
>> stupid, I say no.
>Yes, that's the core of our argument; you feel that making use of
>someone else's creative work is morally wrong, for some reason.
>I don't. But I also think the burden of proof should be on the
>side favoring restrictive laws: freedom should be assumed, absent
>a very compelling reason to restrict it. I have seen, and accept,
>very compelling reasons why I should accept restrictions against
>violence and fraud, for example, so I'm willing to limit the
>freedom to do those things (though even fraud bugs me a little--we
>do accept some kinds of fraud like religions and alternative
>medicines without much downside). But I have yet to see a
>compelling argument for limiting the freedom of people to make use
>of other people's creativity and invention. Indeed, I think it's
>the height of arrogance to suggest that the intended or envisioned
>uses of an author or inventor's work could be even a small
>fraction of the uses to which it could be put by others, so to
>justify restricting those other uses, even defining them away as
>"immoral", requires a level of justification that I just haven't
>seen from anyone, and appealing to the pretexts of legislators and
>and the financial interests of third parties like the record
>industry doesn't cut it.
Essentially I see ideas as the property of the first individual to
come up with them, I am not alone in this, as that what copyright
law is all about.
What I particularly have a problem with is people profiting from
using other peoples ideas.
I'll give you a personnal example.
In late 1991 the phone companies launched Caller I.D.. As
originally intended it was a type of transparency, it was designed
to end malicious calls in particular.
A group of women's groups lobbied successfully to force us to offer
a blocking feature so that estranged wives could call their former
homes and talk with their children without the former husbands
being able to deduce their location. People who had unlisted
numbers also desired this feature.
This of course rendered the technology essentially useless.
I saw immediately how these new features could be abused and
submitted formally to the company a new feature, which I called
"call blocking refusal" essentially it routed blocked calls to
intercept where you would hear a message like "The number you have
called does not accept blocked calls, if you like, you may unblock
your call and try again."
I was told (formally) the idea was considered and rejected.
A few years later we brought out the exact same idea, now called
"Privacy Manager" it was international telecom product of the year
and is making us millions, it is the number one requested feature
in areas that don't even have it.
I have received neither any credit, nor dime one, though a lot of
other people and the company have made a bunch on it.
I have other ideas which would be every bit as popular,
(moneymaking) but it will be a cold day in hell before I share
them.
Brian
Member:
Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
SBC/Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W
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