Re: DRM

[Michal Suchanek]

On 11/5/05, Alfred M. Szmidt <address@hidden> wrote:
>    I believe that the author of a work should be able to determine how
>    it is used, up to the limits of copyright provisions. My reasons
>    for using GPL, LGPL, and so forth in my work are strategic. I do
>    not (at present) subscribe to Richard's ideology. This may be
>    because I have never heard the underlying principle(s) behind his
>    ideology clearly stated in order that I might evaluate them.
>
> Read www.gnu.org, it is clearly stated why users should have the
> freedom to share digital information like software, and songs, and why
> someone who wrote something shouldn't be able to dictate how you use
> it.  A company doesn't dictate how you should use your hammer, right?

Because there is nothing special about hammers.
But there is a company that says you should return the used printer
colour and transfer films to them. If they think that is required for
them to supply the material for frinting I am willling to put
reasonable effort into adhering to the policy.

Plus the example with hammers fails in one way: you get actual
physical hammer but you only get the right to use the software, which
would be more like borrowing a hammer.

On the other hand, the companies selling software should be bound by
some rules that force them to make the software usable under sane
conditions. Like you can install a driver on all computers containing
compatible hardware device, not just one, or you can put the driver on
a local network server for installation on multiple computers, or you
can still use the computer in a network and for producing multimedia
content, even after installing the driver.

This would not be so bad if you were not forced to use the software.
But once you buy a piece of hardware nobody will take it back because
you do not agree to the driver license. And some institutions here
insist on communicating using MS Office. So if you want to communicate
with them electronically you have to buy a x86 PC (because office does
not run on anything else), agree to the license of MS Office (whatever
it is at the time), and probably agree to the license of MS Windows to
run the office suite properly. Maybe there is a paper and snail-mail
alternative. There is certainly in some cases, and I am not familiar
with all the details.

> Nor can your grandmother dictate that you are not allowed to put in
> basil in dish based on her recipie.

Yes, she has the copyright on the written recipe, not the recipe in
general. The same way software author has the copyright on the actual
implementation, not an algorithm data format, or protocol.
There is one problem with software, though. While it is quite easy  to
write down another copy of the recipe, some software like OpenOffice
is much like a very large recipe book. It is complex, bug ridden, and
hard to rewrite from scratch. But that does not mean that the author
of the software should be forced to share it.

However, you can patent the recipe or algorithm used in your software
so that nobody else is not allowed to use it. This may or may not work
for some achievements but fails very miserably for software.
Unfortunately it is allowed in US and elsewere.

Thanks

Michal


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