🚀 go-pugleaf

seajays@my-deja.com wrote:
 
> Someone posted that they couldn't see how a 'number' or a 'bitstream'
> could be 'property'.  They are missing the point.  It is not the number
> or bitstream, in the same way as you do not copyright the metal in a
> mechanism, the paint on a picture or the notes in music.
> 
> What you copyright are the arrangements of the cogs, the arrangement of
> the paint and the arrangement of the notes.  The 'bitstream' is simply
> the 'material' of computer programs, but you are copyrighting the
> arrangement not the numbers.


Your analogy is weak to say the least, but even using such a tool, you
have to agree that the closed source equivalent under this frame of
reference is selling a piece of music and then *forbidding* the singing
of the *song*.

The fact is that a piece of software supplied without source code is a
product unfit for consumption. This has been demonstrated empirically
time and again. Further, shrink-wrapped software licencing as it stands
today supplies no guarantees as to fitness of use of even *object* code
and as such contravenes just about every consumer standard you can think
of. 

Software companies, far from suffering from piracy, have been stealing
and profiteering from consumers for decades.

 
> In fact, the 'numbers' argument is a red herring anyway, as *anything*
> can be broken down and represented by numbers if you so wished.  Your
> own genetic code could be represented thus.  If someone came along and
> decided to make a clone of you, using the argument, "but its only a
> numeric sequence", would you feel the same way?  Or would you think
> that the particular sequence that defines you, ought to be afforded
> some protection?
> 

To address this issue, let me put it in another light for you....

Do you find it acceptable for Monsato to have a patent on *your* genetic
sequence?


Angus

-- 
It said WinNT 4.0 or better on the box.
So I installed Linux.