Re: gpl licensing

[Stefaan A Eeckels]

On 5 Dec 2006 15:01:00 GMT
richard@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin) wrote:

> In article <87ac22wj2e.fsf@toncho.dhh.gt.org>,
> John Hasler  <john@dhh.gt.org> wrote:
> 
> >Patents, copyrights, and to a lesser extent trademarks are all
> >transferrable "rights against the world" and thus have enough of the
> >characteristics of property to be treated as a form of property by
> >the law.
> 
> The law his given certain property-like attributes to things which
> would not otherwise have them.  Lumping these together as
> "intellectual property" suggests that it is natural for them to have
> those and other attributes of physical property. 

No, it just means that they have not yet been universally accepted as
property. We have no problems considering land (real estate) property,
but traditionally Bantu societies do not consider that land can be
owned by an individual. There are no "natural" characteristics of
property, just accepted ones.

> Naturally, various
> interests would like this to be the case, and using the term
> "intellectual property" plays into their hands.  The same goes for
> using terms like "theft" and "stealing" when referring to copyright
> infringement.

Of course. People will try and protect what butters their bread. 

-- 
Stefaan A Eeckels
-- 
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