> As you say: "A copyright is an unsigned social contract enforced by law."
> In essence it is a social agreement to attribute ownership and/or control
> and/or rights of usage to an intellectual property.
>
> Which is exactly what a private use contract between two parties would be.
> Unlike your assertation above, they are -not- entirely different, in fact
> they are fundamentally alike in terms of their nature-- they are arbitrary
> agreements about the rights associated to a particular piece of information
> or product. They both propose to control your use and rights by recourse to
> legal means.
Yes, they both have the same ends--but what I (and oddly, Mike, who's
usually on the other side of me in these arguments) object to is the
means, not the ends. We disagree only slightly in the desired ends--
we both want creative work, but I see more incremental refinement while
you want more long-term speculative creation. But the means matter.
If I can acheive by contract what you want to achieve by law, then to
me, that's reason enough to eliminate the law. Law is force. Law is
evil. Laws that have good effects are still evil, if we can acheive
their ends without them. That's fundamental to my argument.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "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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