🚀 go-pugleaf

In <6v6a4o$c9h$1@Mercury.mcs.net> les@MCS.COM (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
>>software) They are simply employees of large companies, who are the ones
>>to own the copyrights/patents etc.

>That doesn't follow.  The employees work for pay; the pay is given
>with the expectation of being able to recover the cost and perhaps
>make a profit by being able to limit distribution of copies to the
>people who pay some reasonable amount for them (reasonable having
>the usual meaning between buyer and seller).  
But is is not the producer of the product who is profiting from that
product and controlling the rights to that product. The software writer
is the producer, not the company. So, if it is the producer who you
would like to see profit, patents and copyrights should be disallowed
for comapnies, but should only be holdable by individuals who could
prove that it was they who produced the goods. That is my point.
You defend copyright and patents on the basis that the producer should
be able to profit from his/her labours, and then allow the profit to go
to people who never engaged in that labour.
Your emotive defence of copyright is thus flawed.

>>There is absolutely no evidence that
>>reducing the copyright protection to say 3 or 5 years on software would
>>slow the production of that software by any significant amount. 70 years
>>is absurd. 

>This should be irrelevant.  If you want to use someone else's work you
>should agree to their terms or find an alternative.  The more important
>issue is that we should not be forced to use any single work in order
>to interoperate with anything else.  Interchange standards should be
>open in all cases and competition would take care of everything else.

Fine. so why should the state get involved and force certain conditions
on the contract? Patent and copyright law are conditions forced on the
interactions by the state which I or the producer have no control over.
In particular, the consumer is disadvantaged by these extraneous terms.
Why? I have argued that there could be reasons why it is beneficial to
the society to institute such, but the current situation is not thus
beneficial It is a use of the arm of state power to advantage the few
at the expense of the many.

>>There is loads of evidence that the refusal of society to strike a
>>harder bargain (eg release of source code as a condition for copyright
>>or patent protection) is vastly damaging to society. (see the Year 2000
>>mess as an example).

>Perhaps, but that is a separate issue. 

Sorry, that is the issue being discussed here.