[p2p-research] Repurposing Profit for User Freedom

[Kevin Carson]

On 2/13/10, Richard Stallman <rms at gnu.org> wrote:
>     >  Rejecting that general supposed justification does not mean that all
>     >  these laws are bad.  Rather, it means we judge each one specifically
>     >  based on other criteria.  Some of these laws are good, at least in
>     >  part, for the same specific reasons that motivated them in the first
>     >  place.

>     Which of them do you consider good, and why?

> Copyright law for works of art and opinion  may beneficial
>  if some of the restrictions of today's copyright law are eased.
>
>  Patent law may be beneficial outside of certain specific fields where
>  it causes specific problems.  These specific fields include software,
>  agricultural plants and animals grown for food, and medicine in poor
>  coutries.
>
>  Trademark law seems mostly ok to me, but I am interested to see
>  specific information about the abuses you mentioned regarding
>  Alinsky-style logo manipulation.

I guess we disagree on this.  I consider copyrights and patents to be
universally illegitimate, and trademarks to be illegitimate beyond
prohibitions on outright fraud or identity theft.

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