Re: Design principles and ethics

[Bas Wijnen]

On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 10:33:37PM +0200, Pierre THIERRY wrote:
> > > An author could only hope being paid when ordered a work. The only
> > > real way to earn a living as an author was to be under the
> > > protection of a patron.
> > Ok, but now we have contracts and laws governing them. :-)  If we sign
> > a contract that you write something for me and in return I give you
> > money, then you have very effective ways to make sure I do indeed pay
> > that money once you've written it.
> 
> Be it with contracts or a patron of the arts, there's no difference.
> Without copyright, you're paid once, and then you have no rights on the
> diffusion of your work.

Indeed, and that's a very good thing, too.  If you give (or sell) something to
me, and I want to make a copy and give that copy away, then the _should_ be
none of your business.  That is, if you accept the idea that things, once
publicized, are public, and therefore out of your control.  Copyright holders
have lobbied a lot to convince the public that the right to control things you
made is a natural right, even after you have given the thing away (or even
sold it).  IMO that's nonsense.  If you want to keep it to yourself, do that.
If you want to make it public, don't complain that the public does things
differently than you expected.  If you want to make a living by selling things
per copy, well, tough luck.  Making copies is so trivial that that isn't a
good way to do it.  One "solution" for this is of course to prevent making
copies.  It is very obvious to me that that is exactly what we don't want.  We
have all these cool new options, but we'll block them because some guys with a
lot of money are too lazy to come up with a new business plan.

> I agree that ideas should always be free. Indeed, society globally
> agrees with that, and patents and copyrights are exceptions. This is chy
> they have a duration. Thoses exceptions could not last forever.

The US no longer agrees.  They intend to extend the duration of copyright on
regular intervals (just before Mickey Mouse would expire), also effecting
existing works (that is, Mickey Mouse).  This is a workaround around their
constitution, which is as you describe.

> I think this is a very good compromise, as far as copyright is
> concerned.

I think it _was_ a good compromise.  To be clear, the compromise is between
more created works on the one hand, and making created works public property
on the other.  I think that the term for copyrights is absurdly long, which
effectively makes them "forever", and (due to the almost zero cost copying) it
isn't realistic (or desirable) anymore to promise authors that they have the
exclusive right on making copies.

> I'm less sure about patents.

Patents are even worse, and also even more off-topic. ;-)

Thanks,
Bas

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