The Death of D. (Was Tango vs Phobos)

[Jb]

"Yigal Chripun" <yigal100 at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:g899ph$1gks$1 at digitalmars.com...
> Mike Parker wrote:
>>> no one disputes that the artist/software developer should be able to
>>> earn a living.
>>
>> But you want to take the choice of how they do so out of their hands.
>
> Again, I do not take that choice. You claim that a software developer
> has the right to decide to treat his software as a product and sell
> "units" of it. I claim that such an option does not exist in the first
> place. software is information, either you share it or you keep it to
> yourself. beyond that there are copy-right laws that _give_ the author a
> limited time-span of exclusivity. the software developer doesn't have a
> right to exclusivity, he receives it from society for a limited time.
> that time span should represent a balance between the fact the published
> work is public domain and the need to make it worthwhile for an
> individual to publish his work. current us law is 70 years after the
> death of that individual is out of balance entirely.
> a more reasonable amount (for software) should be 10-15 years at most.
> maybe even less.

Again you are making an utterly pointless distinction. When we talk about 
what rights the author has of course we are talking about what rights our 
societys have decided they have. We are not saying the rights are bestowed 
on us by god.

Although FWIW i agree the length of copyright is far too long.

I think perhaps 20 years would be long enough.


>> I don't dispute any of that (well, except the last bit about the future
>> of indies). The opportunities opened up by the internet are tremendous,
>> and I've taken advantage of them myself to some extent. But you've
>> missed the point entirely. I'm not saying we should disallow free
>> distribution. That's rather silly. My argument is that *it's the
>> creator's choice to sell his product or distribute it freely.*
>
> Again, this choice never existed but rather manufactured artificially by
> a few groups of interest.

Again an utterly pointless thing to say.

You may as well say that a few hundred years ago we didnt have the right to 
a fair trials so we should not have them now.

It's utterly irelevant, we have that right today, so lets stick to talking 
about that.

(at least we do in civilized countries).


> Why don't you pay for each song you here on the radio for example?
> when you go to a restaurant do you pay for the taste, the smell or the
> food itself?

We do pay for songs that are played on the radio. In America there's ASCAP, 
and likewise in other countries there are organizations that are licenced by 
the government / rights owners, to collect royalties from the radio 
stations.

The radio stations typicaly pay these royalties by runing adverts.



>> Speaking of the GPL, how do you feel about taking GPLed code and using
>> it in closed-source, proprietary software that is then distributed to
>> your customers freely or commercially (that is, ignoring the terms of
>> the GPL altogether)? Is that just as acceptable to you as pirating the
>> end product?
>
> I feel that the GPL is a necessary evil. It's a hack on top of a broken
> system. Ideally, there should be no need for it at all.
> Currently the GPL is the exception to the rule. the default is
> Closed-source. I'd want it to be the default while closed source would
> be the exception.
> to answer your question: yes it's wrong to subvert the GPL. The parallel
> you're trying to draw here however is not acceptable to me. these are
> two separate issues.

So GPL coders have the right to control what is done with their work but 
book authors / musicians dont?