I don't think a shortening of copyright law would really result in what Stallman suggests software becoming "unfree" after 5 years. This ignores the huge benefits of open/ free software development models in the contemporary networked systems environment. Also it neglects how incredibly outdated 5 year old software would be in an active open source project and how the now proprietary non-free software would compete with a more up-to-date free collaborative offering. You can see this process in action in numerous BSD license style projects, that can become unfree any day of the week, but still continue to have the "free" version be the dominate source tree for all its proprietary derivatives.
Network services are much greater threat to traditional notions of software and data "freedom" than any realignment of copyright law. --michael On 03/02/2011 06:53 PM, Clark, Nicholas wrote: > In reply, I want to point to this from Richard Stallman > (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pirate-party.html) in which he points out that > Software Freedom as we know it depends on copyright being more or less the > way it is now, and that, for example, the Swedish Pirate Party's platform of > shortening the copyright term to five years would result in less, not more > freedom as applied to software (there's probably an analogous Free Culture > situation, but I can't think of it). While weaker copyright laws are ideal, > adjusting them to permit the amount of freedom available currently with > respect to software would require - as Stallman suggests - additional new > laws. That, as I broadly understand it, is inconsistent with libertarianism. > Moreover, because important new law would need to be promulgated in order to > reach an outcome approximately as just as (in some respects) the current > system, little would be accomplished, aside from confusion with a new system, > wherein lies the poten ti > al for injustice in unpredictability. I suppose I'm arguing for the status > quo with regard to copyright, which surprises me. But I should also note > that I am surprised at how well Free licenses can turn something as weird as > copyright law into something that actually makes sense with regard to the way > real humans use creative work. > > -Nick > ________________________________________ > From: [email protected] [[email protected]] On > Behalf Of Kevin Driscoll [[email protected]] > Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2011 4:15 PM > To: Discussion of Free Culture in general and this organization in particular > Subject: [FC-discuss] Libertarian critique of "intellectual property" > > My classmate just passed along an article that critiques IP from a > strictly Libertarian point-of-view. Some of it will be elementary to > folks on this list but it also provides some provocative / useful > links to another literature that may be less familiar. > > To long to copy paste so here's a link: > http://mises.org/daily/5025/The-Fight-against-Intellectual-Property > > Curious to know what you think. > > Kevin > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.freeculture.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss > FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss > > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.freeculture.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss > FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freeculture.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss
