On Sat, 24 Jan 2004, District Webmaster wrote: > I have absolutely no qualms with Mozart's decendants owning his works. > We allow everything else to be passed on -- including other things that > don't exist as physical objects, like business entities -- or money > (which no longer exists outside of a widely agreed-upon concept).
The United States Constitution does not agree with you there, and neither do I--both for very good reasons. I assume you've read writings from everyone from Thomas Jefferson to Lawrence Lessig on the topic, so I don't think we really need to rehash it here (if I recall correctly, we already have several times in the past :-). I for one would not like to live in a world where every "specific organization of ideas" from 'Romeo and Juliet' to 'Toccata and Fugue' was copyrighted by a corporation or individual, even if (and this is a pretty big if) every piece of information was available, and for a reasonable cost. You apparently don't mind that idea, whereas I find it chilling. I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree :-) One question, though, for you: imagine that next week, I happened to come up with this "matter duplicator", where I could make instant and exact copies of basically any physical object. Do you believe that there should then be an unlimited "copyright" for physical objects, where if I created something (say a unique chair design, or a new computer), nobody should be allowed to duplicate that item, even if I've sold it to them, without my express permission (i.e. paying me a certain fee for it)? ~ross p.s. thanks for the discussion, and thanks for all those who are putting up with a larger volume of UUG mail than they'd necessarily like. Hope your "delete thread" key is working well! -- This sentence would be seven words long if it were six words shorter. ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
