"Dave Crossland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Copyright used to be an 'Industrial regulation' that effected only
> publishers who copied and distributed works, and the Internet has
> already made everyone a 'non commercial publisher' who can copy and
> distribute worldwide.

Non-commercial in what way?  I pay to publish and I am paid to
publish.  Smells like commerce to me.

So-called "non-commercial" terms like Creative Commons are usually
really one-sided, unfair and anti-commercial terms: *I* can be paid
for use of this work, *you* cannot be.  It's a classic
free-only-for-those-rich-enough type of restrictive copyright licence.

As an aside, I feel that too many UK activists confuse anti-commercial
with anti-corporate: corporations often have enough money to abuse the
anti-commercial-licensed works if it helps them.  Also, it's difficult
to write an anti-corporate licence, because corporations usually
employ other people to do their work.  Using anti-commercial licences
for activism is usually scoring an own goal.


[RMS interview]
> Meanwhile, the UK has legislated a perpetual copyright on Winnie the
> Pooh. This was made to seem palatable because the royalties go to
> charity; but it can serve as a precedent for perpetual copyright on
> other works. I am sure the publishers want that. [...]

Even before that, the King James V bible was controlled by letters
patent rather than copyright: anyone know more about that?  When
I last looked into it, I didn't find much information.

> RS: I've identified three broad categories of works. First there are
> functional works: works that you use to get a job done. Second, works
> that represent someone's thoughts: what certain people thought, or
> saw, want, or believe. The third category is aesthetic or entertaining
> work, where the sensation you get from looking at the work is the
> whole point. I believe each category needs to be considered
> separately.

This is a totally false and arbitrary distinction.  I may use works
that represent someone's thoughts or works that cause a sensation to
get a job done, or works that I use to get a job done may be aesthetic
or entertaining in a way.

What's more, making this distinction is dangerous: it may allow people
to restrict the modifications to a functional work if they succeed in
presenting it as aesthetic, and so on.

That dangerous approach means that I must now view FSF the same way
that RMS views CC.  I can't recommend FSF in general at present,
because to do so is to support non-free-software works implicitly.
Pretty depressing state of affairs, IMO.

Hope that explains,
-- 
MJ Ray - see/vidu http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Somerset, England. Work/Laborejo: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
IRC/Jabber/SIP: on request/peteble.

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