🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991May4.235033.15917@agate.berkeley.edu>, I (Adam R.) wrote:
> Copyrights and patents are economic incentives, and not moral rights.

In article <RJC.91May5084257@brodie.cstr.ed.ac.uk> rjc@cstr.ed.ac.uk
(Richard Caley) responded:
>Many (including me) would disagree. Your argument does not adress the
>point you seem to want to make, what you support is more like
>`copyrights and patents are economic incentives not constitutionally
>recognised rights' which is very different.

	The first paragraph of my posting was an introduction and 
not the thesis of my argument, which was that MacOS and 1-2-3 do not appear
to be examples of programs whose creation depended on the availability
of a user interface copyright, and that those who claim otherwise should
present more evidence.  The references to the constitution and the
supreme court were just examples of empirical evidence of the consensus in
our society that both copyrights and patents exist only for public benefit.  

>Many people would argue that the ability to control what happens to
>the things which one produces _is_ a basic right and also a
>responsibility. For instance it is one of the few things that
>liberatarians and marxists seem to agree on.

	I'm not sure that Marxists would agree with that statement,
and I'm not sure that anyone would agree that such a statement extends
beyond physical objects.  In general if you create something physical,
say, a car, and somebody wants to use that car, that other person's
use of your car interferes with your own use, and it is that interference
which property rights address.  On the other hand, if somebody uses your
idea, it generally does not interfere with your use of that idea.

	Has there has ever been a society that extended copyright
monopolies to pure ideas in the same way that one can copyright the
expression of ideas in art and literature?  Some people may take the
"intellectual property" analogy literally, but that principle is not
the rationale for patents and copyrights as they exist today.

Adam J. Richter			adam@soda.berkeley.edu
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