From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Tue Jun 18 2002 - 17:18:17 MDT
> (Mike Lorrey <mlorrey@datamann.com>):
>
> > And anyway, why is it so easy for a capitalist like yourself to simply
> > accept a law that forbids a profit-making activity but not the same
> > activity for free? An activity should be either legal or illegal based
> > on other factors, shouldn't it? And if it's legal, shouldn't it also
> > be legal to profit from it? Clearly what you're doing is not protecting
> > the /rights/ of the author, but the /market/ of the author, and that
> > sure smells like a subsidy to me. As a capitalist myself, I have to
> > assume that such a subsidy is wrong unless I hear /very/ good reasons
> > for it.
>
> A fence is not a subsidy, just as a tax break is not welfare.
That's a strange turn of phrase. A fence certainly is subsidy if the
government pays for it. And where tax breaks entered this argument I
have no idea.
> What you should be questioning, if you think IP is such a bad idea,
> why it is that people can own real estate permanently, when they can
> only own IP for a temporary period.
That's a very good question, with a very good answer: because even
among those people who believe in IP, it obviously can't be permanent
because that will create a permanent obstacle to any creative work
ever becoming part of the culture of common ideas and common knowledge.
The question to ask is "If it's obvious that IP can never be a good
in the long run, what makes it acceptable in the short run?"
> The art that a patent or copyright protects is similarly an
> 'improvement' upon nothingness that the creator is granted exclusive
> control of to encourage their original investment of time/money. Why
> should IP be only temporarily controlled?
The idea that art is created "from nothing" is ridiculous. Art is
created from the background of culture and common knowledge shared by
the artist and audience--otherwise it would have no meaning to the
audience. Likewise, every invention since the stone age was created
using the tools and ideas of the previous age. Newton got it right:
with those giants' shoulders to stand on, you don't get the vision.
And if new work /never/ enters the public domain, then the next
generation won't have any shoulders to stand on.
-- 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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