On Mon, Aug 18, 2003 at 04:55:36PM +1000, Darryl Barlow wrote: > The tension between intellectual property rights and the public benefit of > "free" information is building, and I don't know how it will ultimately be > resolved, not only for Software but in many even more important areas. Look, > for instance, at pharmaceuticals. New drugs are developed which are in many > cases too expensive for those who would benefit most. Yet without the > rewards conferred by patents, it is doubtful that many of these drugs would > have been developed at all. Yet there is also the question of what advances > are not being made because of the "locking-up" of information.
RMS is probably spinning in his grave :) If you listen to or read any of his talks about copyright he is very clear to say that intellectual property is a catch word invented by lawyers to confuse the issues. People should speak about, copyright, patents and trade marks seperately because they are very different issues and exist for different reasons. Intellectual property is too vague to be discussed intelligently, and it presupposes that one should treat software, books, etc as property. That's just what he has to say about that, and I've probably made a mess of paraphrasing him, but he makes a good point. Also he does talk about the issue of patents both in software and in other fields. I recommend listening to some of his speeches they are available in ogg format and transcribed to text as well: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html#Speeches I even have a video of one of his speeches, I got it off an ftp site somewhere. It might be on the giFT filesharing network as well. I think it is always best to get an opinion of a person's ideas from what they say in speeches or what they write in essays. There are plenty of times where a person will get pissed off and say something in an email or in casual conversation, which may not reflect what they really mean (and this in turn may be taken out of context, etc). Bijan
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