Re: Design principles and ethics

[Pierre THIERRY]

Scribit Bas Wijnen dies 04/05/2006 hora 20:40:
> The infrastructure I was talking about is internet and broadband
> connections.

Then you voluntarily ignore a very crucial part of the infrastructure.
You just can't say ``the part of the infrastructre I'm OK to consider
will cost zero''.

> I'm saying that it shouldn't be paid _per copy_

I agree.

> because counting the number of copies is hardly possible

I think it's one of the baddest reasons, though.

> and it's simply not desirable to put a penalty on copying, because
> that's what it effectively means to ask money per copy

Then I agree again.

I'm also thinking that putting a penalty on copying is bad. But I also
think it is the right of the author (that's why it is called copyright)
to put that penalty. If you don't want to suffer the penalty, avoid his
work.

Sometimes the work is hard to avoid, like for academics manuals. If you
think it is a very bad situation that you don't have the right to hand a
copy of a needed book to another student, then work on with universities
and professors so that they put policies on manual publication. They
definitely can when the work is done with univiersity's money.

We have some work in this direction in France, where mathematics
professors are writing, collaboratively, free manuals, as in free
speech.

Again, no need to force free publication. I bet some parents and schools
will just prefer the free (as in free beer) manual, and many professors
will like that it is free (as in free speech) when they need to derivate
from it.

No need to fight evil, just make something good. (in this case, though;
I really think some evil must me fought, and active defense makes sense
in a lot of situations)

Freely,
Nowhere man
-- 
address@hidden
OpenPGP 0xD9D50D8A

signature.asc
Description: Digital signature