[OT] - does IP exist?

Adam D. Ruppe destructionator at gmail.com
Sun Aug 17 22:34:04 PDT 2008


Oh dear, I'm going to regret getting involved in this thread. I should
just have kept my focus on the compiler... oh well.


On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 02:22:05AM +0000, Jesse Phillips wrote:
> Can I bring up my list twist on the whole give versus take rights thing? 
> Sure you can claim I don't have a right to control distribution of my 
> work, but I can also claim you don't have the right to distribute work 
> (not just mine). This works for the right to life. I can say you actually 
> don't have a right to life, but no one has the right to take it away.

Fascinating. So if we accept this, what would give you the right to
distribute your own work? If I don't have it, why do you?

> I have made my comments here: http://www.digitalmars.com/
> webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=75199

It's getting late where I am, so I might have to reply to that later.

> Frankly I really don't care about the bills either. The true fundamental 
> thing that controls whether I can spend time developing stuff for other 
> people, is if I can get food on the table. 

Food is something I clumped in with bills.

> You claim your goal is to have ideas flourish. Yet in this scenario you 
> can't create your ideas, you create someone else's.

This is a way for an artist to pay his bills (buy food, etc.) by doing art.

If he can do enough work for other people, this gives him free time to
do his own work.

However, creating someone else's ideas is still having ideas flourish.

I'd love to create illustrated books, but I'm no good at drawing. If
I hired an illustrator to draw the pictures for me, those ideas would
still be out in the open. I didn't do it all myself, nor did the hired
illustrator, but that doesn't make the ideas of any less value to the
world.

> Once again I hope you have read my beef with ignoring rights. I just 
> don't see the end result as what justifies copyright. I'm not here to 
> make a Utopia.

Our ethical systems are incompatible. I define justification as being
dependent on the results in all cases. Thus, the only rights are those
that can be shown to bring good consequences. (Where, of course, good
must be defined separately as an axiom.)

> You did so well there moving away from Utopia, but you're back. See my 
> first comment. It ain't just the bills, its the food man, the food. Your 
> ideal world just got harder to create.

I could go into detail about why this isn't a deal-breaker, but it is
bed time so I must be brief: food is cheap. A person's food is rather
trivially paid for; a person could eat with less than $3000 / year.

It isn't difficult to make that much money (in the US anyway),
even without a steady job or any special qualifications at all.

Housing, on the other hand, is brutal, and still quite necessary.

> Wait, stop right there. You don't have a right to place restrictions on 
> something you created.

I could live with that, but I don't see it as ideal. Keeping names on
something is a courtesy* to the creator's ego - it makes the creator happy
to have done the work and might build up a good reputation, getting him a
job at a later time. This gives him some incentive to keep doing his work.

* Note my specific wording in the old post: do not misrepresent the source.
I don't propose that including the author's name be /required/, but I don't
think anyone should lie about it if asked, and should volunteer the
information anyway for the above reason. You can see one reason why I prefer
the zlib like license used in Phobos to the BSD license used in Tango here.
(Another reason there is a standard library exists in most every program
written in the language, so a requirement in its license is a requirement
in every license of every program distributed as a statically compiled
executable (which I prefer for end user convenience, just run it and go), which
I think is just simply a hassle.)

> Assuming the creator has kept his creation private. He is the only one to 
> know of it. The creator has the rights to this creation. He is able to 
> use it as he wishes. Would you not agree with this? I mean, no one knows 
> he has it, so they can't take rights away.

This doesn't mean he has the rights to his creation. This is saying he
has the rights to his /self/.

I'm not saying he must give up something he creates; in fact, I specifically
said the opposite at the top of my long post earlier today. A person
cannot be forced to divulge something.

> So with total control of his new found creation, he creates a legal 
> document that is agreed upon by using the his creation. 

Why is the creation of this document justified? We are going back to
out incompatible ethics again: I don't care about your rights, and you
don't care about my consequences, so we'd just be talking past each other.

I'll say it anyway though: laws are justified only because of the good
they bring society. If it does good, ok, I'll live with it. If not, well,
I'll live with it anyway since I don't want to get sued or go to jail, but
I won't like it.

-- 
Adam D. Ruppe
http://arsdnet.net



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