Subject:
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Re: IP (was: Re: Any suggestions on a homepage?)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 18 Jan 2000 22:12:10 GMT
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Viewed:
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512 times
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On Tue, 18 Jan 2000 11:25:56 GMT, Larry Pieniazek <lar@voyager.net>
wrote:
> Learning about HTML by viewing source is exactly analogous.
Ah, right. I read your post as saying that it was OK to cut and paste
HTML code[1], though not content itself.
> (mis?)Quoting a favorite character: "If you see an apparent
> contradiction, check your premises, at least one of them is wrong"...
A.C. Doyle?
Quite probably something is wrong. It's just that I can't manage to
see it either, which is why I asked you.
>
> Note also that I would not deign to speak for official LP position, so
> don't try to pin that on me please..., and my interpretation of logic
> may well be incorrect. Ideas seem like property to me, but I could be
> wrong. If they aren't, though, what are they?
Good question. I don't know. See the Free Software advocates for one
possible side of the issue. See rec.arts.sf.composition and
rec.arts.sf.written, both places where a lot of professional fiction
writers hang out, for another side.
> Working from a rights basis, if you use someone else's idea that they
> expended effort to develop, against the will of that person, haven't you
> stolen their effort? Aren't you using what is theirs in a way they did
> not intend? Please come at it from that angle and see what you come up
> with.
So if I take a desktop computer and turn it into a router with the
help of the Linux Router Project, that should be illegal? And I am
when I do that taking potential money away from the original seller,
because now I'm using a $200 reject instead of a $2000+ Cisco or a
$2000+ Server-class PC to do the same job. And that means I took away
$1800+ of potential revenue.
Using something not as its creator intended sounds not like a good
argument to me. When I use a clothespin to hold my nose shut, when I
use a newspaper to light the fire, when I wipe my arse with the pages
of a book I particularly don't like, even when I use MS Excel as a
database (those last two purely hypothetical), is that a violation of
the sellers' rights?
In my view, when something is sold to me, I have the right to do with
it as I wish without it somehow being "force". Why arbitrarily exclude
copying? [besides, of course, the utilitarian explanation which I
personally agree with pending a revisal of the patent system]
Any sort of universal legal protection of IP rights that I can think
of pretty much requires either omniscience, or it requires violating
others' rights.
How do I arrive at that conclusion? One: It is hypothetically possible
for someone else to invent/think up/etc. _exactly_ the same thing as
you did. This becomes much more so the simpler the invention is, and
paradoxically this also goes hand in hand with an ease of copying. For
example, the paperclip. Very easy to copy it once the concept has been
thought of. Also very easy to think of the concept. The _only_ way the
paperclip would ever have been marketed as such was with the coming of
patent law, because before that, commercially marketing it, as opposed
to using it, wasn't viable.
Now, suppose that you have two people who both claim to independently
have invented something. [Historical precedent: Gutenberg (the German
chap), the Dutch chap, and the English chap, who more or less acording
to current historical beliefs invented bookprinting simultaneously.]
If you have a system in law to protect IP rights, you necessarily
violate the rights of the one in preference of the other -- in current
patent law that is usually the one who can prove s/he thought of it
_first_. But first doesn't necessarily equal only.
In fact, the only "IP rights" like system that would jive with what
I've heard about your views so far, would be to scrap the whole nine
yards of the law, and the open market will [or will not] develop a
system whereby a buyer of a product would have to sign a contract
saying that he will not copy it.
The difference between situation one and two: The burden of proof has
shifted from the [accused] copi_er_ to the [presumed] copy-ee. And a
whole lot of paperwork extra.
That seems to coincide remarkably well with the rest of your views --
let the Open Market handle it as it sees fit. Personally, I don't
think the Holy Open Market can deal with things like this effectively.
Anyway, how was your flight?
Jasper
[1] Not that I entirely disagree with that - in the culture of the
WWW, there is very strong precedent for allowing the cut and paste
copying of "code", so much so that it is IMHO a part of the 'societal
contract' you implicitly agree with when entering the space.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: IP (was: Re: Any suggestions on a homepage?)
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| I have to think more about the rest of your post but I did just want to point out: (...) That isn't quite what I mean here. Unless Cisco has invented the entire notion of routing based on IP packets, which I highly doubt (seems to me to have been (...) (25 years ago, 20-Jan-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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