[p2p-research] Repurposing Profit for User Freedom

[Kevin Carson]

On 2/8/10, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:

> You are right Ryan, and please not that copyleft, creative commons, and the
> like, all recognize copyright, they are, as if often said, a 'hack' on it,
> but they take as its base its existence, then reform/transform it to
> something different, that protects the common and shared ownership .. they
> do not deny IP (though stallman dislikes the term because he makes stark
> distinctions between copyright and patents)

The problem is that, so long as copyright exists at all, licensing
systems like CC et al *have* to be piggybacked on it in self-defense,
as the only alternative to stuff in the public domain being
appropriated and copyrighted against its creators. That doesn't mean
people who use CC necessarily recognize copyright as legitimate; some,
like Stephan Kinsella, just use CC as an expedient to guarantee their
work will be kept freely available in the public domain.  That's
certainly my intent when I use OS licenses of any kind.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
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The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
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Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html