[p2p-research] Fwd: [fcforum] Fw: iPad DRM is a dangerous step backward. Sign the petition!

[Ryan Lanham]

On 2/3/10, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Feb 03, 2010 13:22:42 PM -0500, Ryan Lanham (rlanham1963 at gmail.com)
> wrote:
>
> > IP doesn't block free and open.  It blocks theft.  You say it isn't
> > theft.  The world disagrees with you. So do I.  "Artificial
> > scarcity" is as absurd as communal property.  I always think of the
> > wonderful scene in Dr. Zhivago where he walks into his own house
> > after the war to find the more "just" solution of everyone living in
> > it.  People have rights.  One of those rights is the right to own
> > their own ideas.
>
> Ryan,
>
> I understand (I think) what you are saying above and boy, do I agree!,
> but with a suggestion. I find it much simpler and robust, so to speak,
> to substitute "ideas" with "time" in your last sentence above.
>
> It cuts all the "marginal cost of copies is zero", "information wants
> to be free" "scarcity is artificial" etc... slogans down to something
> much more concrete. My own TIME is only mine and is sure as hell a
> really limited resource.
>
> If it takes me, say, five full days to research and test stuff in
> order to write something that gives one million people emotions
> (e.g. poetry) or, much more prosaically, teaches them in twenty
> minutes how to do something they need to do, I may only be able to
> afford to do it if there is some guarantee that I can make enough of
> it to at least pay my expenses for those same days. If there are no
> such guarantee (because there is no protection at all of that time
> investment, ignoring for a moment how it is legally called) I won't
> cry from the rooftops. I'll simply spend that same time teaching
> privately in some school or course for people who can afford a good
> live teacher. But in that case, since time is damn scarce, I will NOT
> have any TIME left to do the other thing, even if that could have been
> useful to many more people by publishing it online
>
> > It is antithetical to the commons to be compelled to participate in it.
>
> Very well said, again. When I talk with FOSS zealots, I often point
> out that "I can't say people with a straight face that in order to be
> Free as in Freedom they HAVE to use only the software that *I* call
> Free"
>                      Marco



Yes, you are right.  Time is better.  I agree.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20100203/2820168f/attachment-0001.html>