On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 11:06, District Webmaster wrote: > Au contraire. Information, by it's nature, MUST be contained, or it is > not information. > > Information is data that is organized into a meaningful structure. This > organization cannot be done unless a containing medium (including > thought) is involved. Similarly, information cannot be transmitted, > except through a medium (including sound). > > You might, however, claim that the display of information immediately > exposes it to duplication -- but does that mean it _ought_ to be > duplicated, or that it is morally right to do so? > > Just because Mozart could transcribe a symphony after hearing it doesn't > mean he did it, then went on to perfrom the work without the author's > permission. > > What feels contrary to me is the idea that you could create anything and > it wouldn't belong to you and, therefore, you wouldn't have the right to > control your work. Creative ownership is the most natural of ideas, and > rightfully so! Without creative ownership and the laws, like copyright, > that protect it, there would be nothing preventing one entity from > stealing another entity's creation and using it against the creator's > wishes. > > Perhaps I can illustrate with an example -- just theoretical, of course. > Let's say a programmer, we'll call him Leenoos Tervulds, created an > operating system kernel. He might use the perfectly natural idea of > creative ownership, protecteded by strong copyright law, to require > others to use his work under terms of his choosing. Without the law to > protect him, another entity, let's call the Mykrowshoft, could simply > take the kernel and use it for whatever purposes it wanted, without > compensating poor Leenoos in money, code, status or consideration. > > For some reason, a lot of people can clearly understand that depriving a > person of the benefits of his or her property is evil, but don't see the > correlation to depriving a person of the benefits of his or her > time/effort. For the entire histroy of man we've understood that it's > wrong to take what does not belong to you, but now that very basic of > beliefs is under attack -- by suggesting that it's wrong for you to > control what you create. (Ah yes, the adversary is very clever indeed.)
The only argument that defeats this is Michael's argument that we don't own knowledge, we just discover it, so why should we have control over it? I like that you point out that it's not just the knowledge, but time and effort expended in creating (or discovering) and packaging the knowledge that give people the feeling of entitlement. Overall I think you make a good point. People want control over their property and ideas, even (especially?) Free Software advocates. What would RMS do if a magical DRM technology came about that allowed enforcement of the GPL? Part of me thinks he'd love it (I might too). Bryan ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
