Paul Boddie wrote: > danielx wrote: > > > > But we have only considered the economics of such a decision. Even if > > there is no market value to a work, a person has an understandable > > desire to exercise the rights of ownership over a work, given the > > amount of personal investment one makes in producing it. > > There are other motivations, too. An author might wish that their work > convey a particular message and that others should not be able to make > derived works which distort or contradict that message. However, there > are various established principles of fair use which limit the author's > control over such derived works. > > [...] > > > I think the above idea is frequently missed in discussions about > > copyrights/patents in the open source world. There, the focus seems to > > be on the marketability granted by protections (legal or physical). The > > post I am responding to illustrates this focus. Do we believe an author > > forfeits ownership of a work merely by sharing it? As a matter of > > conscience, I don't believe the answer can be imposed on anyone. Every > > person must answer this for him or herself. > > As we've mentioned above, one crucial issue is control over published > works and over the potentially related works of others. With software, > such control is mediated by the licence which is often prominent, even > unavoidable when using proprietary software; thus, people using or > distributing software should be aware of the licence which applies to > the work. In contrast, works in areas such as popular music are not
While I agree with most of your post, I think the point should be made that eula's don't hold up very well in US courts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EULA#Enforceability > prominently "labelled" with licensing information if you're listening > to that music playing on the radio, television, in a public space, and > so on. This apparent "promiscuity" with such works leads people to > believe that they are freely exchangeable and that the author is not > exercising control, even if that isn't really the case due to the > framework established by the recording industry for broadcasters. > > So, people perceive an apparent lack of control as some kind of lack of > ownership, that the work has, by being shared in an apparently Extremely interesting point! This should really motivate people to answer the question I posed earlier: Does an author of software forfeit his rights to the code if he shares his program (ie, reliquishes _complete_ protection over the code)? Let's say this happens: I want to sell some software, but I'm affraid people will just copy it. So I prototype it in Python (or whatever programming language) and never release the program. Based on that, I design a chip (I know this is nearly impossible, but we are doing a mental experiment), which does exactly the same thing. First of all, the chip can be reverse engineered (of course, with MUCH greater difficulty than the equivalent code). Should I still be worried that my invention will be copied? A second point to consider: The chip is patentable (I think this is the case legally, as well as in the court of public opinion), so what about the equivalent code? > unconditional way, become part of their common culture - a sentiment or > an understanding that can presumably be traced back throughout the > history of human culture itself. At the opposite end of the spectrum of > control, when mechanisms of control are used to restrict the > distribution of derived works or the production of coincidentally > related works, is it unfair that people wish to disregard such > apparently counter-intuitive mechanisms? An interesting example in > popular culture was the legal argument about whether silence > constitutes an original work > (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2133426.stm), but > things like patents affect the ability of others to create works in a > fashion that can be much harder to predict. > > Paul -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
