The Death of D. (Was Tango vs Phobos)

[Jesse Phillips]

On Sun, 17 Aug 2008 03:59:08 +0300, Yigal Chripun wrote:

> My major issue with what you wrote is this: 60 years or so ago women
> didn't have the right to vote in the US. let's go even before that to
> the time when black people in America were considered property and
> didn't have any rights. In that period of time a white person could
> claim that the law states that his black slave is his property and it is
> entirely legal and moral to treat him as such. Today, you'd of course
> disagree. Just as that man would claim according to the law that black
> people where not really people and didn't have any rights, you now claim
> that we are not entitled to the right of freedom of information.
> besides that, you talk in metaphors of infinitely copyable chairs (just
> like in star trek..). I can compare that with the philosophical question
> of "what if a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody there, does it
> make a sound?" BUT, elementary physics tells us that the tree does make
> a sound regardless. And I'll tell you: The chairs are *not* infinitely
> copyable. What if I had three legs? well, I don't. So please stick to
> the reality that chairs are not the same thing as software.
> 

Sorry your beef with the past does not work. Back in those days blacks 
were property, sad but true. Yes there were people that didn't like it, 
and it was a horrible treatment of human life, yet there is a reason we 
do not charge people with a crime that was not a crime at the time. You 
must work to make change, and breaking law might be the only way to do 
it, but it is your choice and breaking the law (hence illegal).

My infinitely copyable chair example actually made reference to 
productions lines, which I do believe exist outside of Star Treck. I 
suppose I will have to state that yes, truly infinite copyable anything 
can not exist, you have to store you program somewhere. But for all 
intents and purposes products can be produced to a state that is 
equivalent to infinitely copyable, you only need enough to satisfy 
everyone that wants it.

Information, this is the god damn English language we are talking about, 
you need to go and define this thing that you wish to be throwing around 
as something we have a right to. And frankly, what we refer to for this 
right is completely different and so I am not going to define it myself 
because that is not the argument.

> There are no inherit rights that allow the author to control
> distribution. The way it actually works is this: a) you came up with new
> exciting idea/poem/article/software/etc.. b) either you keep it to
> yourself or you publish it. c) once it was published it is in the public
> domain. you cannot tell me: I have an idea such as <some idea> BUT since
> I just told you my idea it is mine alone and you cannot use it. If you
> do not want me to use your idea just keep it for yourself and don't tell
> anyone about it. This is what Coca-Cola does with its secret recipe.
> (it's secret!)

Yeah, they are natural rights given by nature. A farmer produces corn, 
and low and behold he has control over distribution of it. Why, he 
labored over it and got a product. If someone else is successful in doing 
the same, great but in either case this creator has the right given by 
the fact that to produce corn in such quantities takes work and not 
everyone is going to stumble across the free supplies they need. Which is 
where the idea of inherent rights to distribution come from. If a laborer 
of physical goods gets this right without legal statement, a laborer of 
something that does not have this innate property should have it extended 
to him.

> 
> The above basic scheme was augmented by copyright/patent laws in the
> following matter:
> The state gives the creator a *limited* time-span of exclusivity from
> the moment he told the world his idea or published his book/song/etc.
> This is a trade-off designed to make it worthwhile for people to come up
> with new ideas, invest their time in art, etc. I.e the public gives some
> of its rights in order to gain more diversity of ideas and such.

Do you see a problem with such an idea? If I work at something that 
others enjoy why not have exclusive rights to it? Yes people are willing 
to create things for free, but that was their choice and they were the 
ones that put work into it.

> 
> Your entire analogy to chairs and such is plain false. This is not about
> evil me trying to prevent the hard working artist/software developer
> from earning his [well deserved] keep. With your method it is illogical
> for a creator to give away his creation freely and yet get paid for his
> hard work. That is, companies like Red hat simply cannot exist since you
> can freely [and legally] download all their products on their website.
> Yet, fact is that Red hat is a very financially successful company.

First off, not RedHats choice anyway, they built on something that was 
already being given out for free. Secondly, how is it logical to give 
something out for free and then be paid for it? Isn't that like selling 
it (this is assuming you get paid for every one given out for free).

The main fallacy with your argument is saying that people can make money 
even if the are not charging for it. So what? I'm not arguing here what 
the best business model is to make the most money. There is lots of 
great, free software out there where people make money. What does that 
have to do with anything? If you want to convince people to make their 
stuff free, then great, but it has nothing to do with are argument.

> 
> Another example would be music artists which distribute their music
> freely online and yet do get paid for their hard work - the more people
> listen to their music online the more will want to come to a live
> performance [and pay for the ticket]. many artists already realized
> this. They do not need the record companies to be successful. on the
> contrary, the more they give for free, the more fans they have and the
> more they earn.

See above. I don't care what gets people the most money. I care about 
these person's right to decide how the do their product distribution.

> 
> When I wanted to buy a book about Java I went and bought "Thinking in
> Java" which the author publishes a free online version of on his site. I
> did download and read the online version and that convinced me it to pay
> for the paper version. Not only that but I also recommend this book and
> other books by the author, Bruce Eckel, to all my friends.

See above. Great your one of the nice peoples that pays for things they 
get for free.

> 
> One last thing: history teaches us that once the freedom of information
> is lost all the other rights will soon follow. happened numerous times
> all over the world. we all know that when someone burns books the next
> thing he'll burn will be people.

See third paragraph. Define information, then correlate to how the loss 
of different types of information (yes there is more than one) lead to 
loss of other rights. I would agree with you on some, but not all. And 
maybe this can be the topic of the next postings.

> 
> Jesse Phillips wrote:
>> Ok, let us leave out the chairs and discuss books (books of fiction).
>> (Little tangent: I will agree there is no, "right to make a living."
>> Hell, I can go as far as to say that there is no right to life,
>> liberty, or pursuit of happiness. But then I would have to continue and
>> say that no one has the right to remove someones life, liberty, or
>> happiness. So really where did we go with this?)
>> 
>> Fiction books, I really would say that this is a collection of
>> information (yes information is in it, but it is not solely
>> information) and you probably disagree. Your claim is that if I can in
>> some way (scanner/typing) get the information in this book onto in
>> infinitely distributable medium I am allowed to distribute this as I
>> see fit because I still have the original? And now back to chairs.
>> 
>> Since you can't seem to state the difference from selling physical
>> items and phantom "infinitely copyable items," think I shall make an
>> attempt and include why the purchaser of said product does not buy a
>> right at any point in time to copy and distribute. As said, physical
>> items are lost when distributed to another. However, if you had some
>> way in which that chair could be copied, production line, I would
>> assume that you would claim that I could only charge for the material
>> cost that goes into it then? I obviously couldn't charge for labor
>> because that would be like a Programmer charging for his software since
>> only labor went into it. But then why would the original creator have a
>> right to set a price for his chair, and probably include the labor in
>> that price, shouldn't it just be for the materials that he use? But
>> then again, why did the materials cost money? Wouldn't it have only
>> been labor put in to get those materials, thus in reality everything is
>> free? Yes there is the supply and demand thing, where the person
>> laboring for materials will sell to the highest bidder. And this is
>> where we have the difference; A laborer can change pricing by not
>> producing an infinite quantity, bits can not be controlled (*cough* DRM
>> *cough*).
>> 
>> This leads to the last point, why the end-user has no right to copy for
>> distribution. The creator has, by having labored (which is not limited
>> to physical), the right to define how copies for distribution are done.
>> (I wish to emphasize _for_) The problem is that software and anything
>> else digital, does not come with this natural property of limited
>> quantity or required labor to copy.
>> 
>> I think I should also cover what I think the end-user does have the
>> right to do once he buys the product. First off he is bound to the
>> legal contract that he agrees to by using the product, why? Because he
>> agreed to it by the fact that he is using the product (this my change
>> depending on where you live, but local law should still rule). If not
>> given some legal document, be it an OSS on or not, I see these rights
>> for the end- user.
>> 
>> The user can not make a profit off of the purchased good until it is no
>> longer being distributed by the creator, the creator is no longer
>> making money. (If a company is the creator, which is likely, they would
>> have some allotted time under 80yrs to control it).
>> 
>> The user has the right to resell, see first point, as long as he is
>> giving up his right of use i.e. he is not keeping a copy for himself to
>> use after the sale.
>> 
>> The user has control over his copy. Just like a chairs, guests can use
>> it with permission from the copy's owner. And if he does not like his
>> chair in the living room he can take it to the dinning room. Personal
>> use copies are fine.
>> 
>> On the subject of users copying. The user can copy for distribution,
>> the end result. If I have a reclining chair, I can take that idea and
>> make my own reclining chair that works and looks exactly the same, as
>> long as I don't use how the original was done (which just might make it
>> hard to prove that it really was all my work).
>> 
>> To sum it up, the end-user does not have the right to decided for the
>> creator, how copy for distribution is handled.