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From: mwm@eris (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Software (and other kinds of) copying
Message-ID: <6780@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 29 Jan 88 22:03:11 GMT
References: <21754@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <229@wright.EDU> <886@xn.LL.MIT.EDU> <160@octopus.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: mwm@eris.UUCP (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer)
Followup-To: comp.sys.misc
Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica
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[Followups have been pointed to comp.sys.misc.]

In article <160@octopus.UUCP> pete@octopus.UUCP (Pete Holzmann)
demonstrates the common fallacy of thinking that anything you can do
can be turned into a right:

<	- The owner's right to control the distribution and use of X
<	- The owner's right to make a living from the distribution and use of X

The first of these isn't a right, but it is legally granted privilege.
I happen to think the laws in this case are wrong.

The second isn't a right, or anything else. The law grants you the
right to _try_ to make a living distributing X. It doesn't say whether
you'll succeed.

<	- The owner of X has the moral right to say 'you may not have X if you
<		will not pay for it, because sales of X are my livelihood'.

Of course the owner has the right to say that. But that doesn't mean
he has the right to actually prevent you from obtaining a copy from
another source. Currently, he can *legally* prevent you from doing so.
That doesn't mean he's behaving morally in doing so.

<There are many positions that can be held wherein such property rights are
<given over to some other party (the State, the People). But in all cases, the
<original creator must be *paid* in some way for the transfer of these rights.

Oh, yeah, like RMS got paid for GNU emacs, right?

<If this is not done, society is left without all forms of professional
<intellectual creation vocation. This would be rather serious!

I don't think it would be nearly as bad as you think. Let's look at
the list of people you think we'd loose:

<	- The obvious: songwriters, authors, artists, programmers, etc.
<	- Money market-watchers (contents of newsletters)
<	- Market research firms (contents of research reports)
<	- Product testing companies (test reports)
<	- Architects (blueprints, building designs, etc)
<	- Professional cooks (recipes in cookbooks, etc)

You didn't break things down into nice categories, so I'm going to re-arrange
things:

	- artists, including songwriters, authers (fiction), and others

Many of these people don't expect to make a living on the artwork they
do. How many artists do you know of whose works are now selling for
fortunes scraped by for most of their life, and died penniless?

	- toolsmiths: programmers, architects, research firms & product testing

Except for programmers, most of these don't make money on sales of
multitudes of copies. They make money by contracting out to right the
original product, and then just hand the report (and copyrights) over
to whoever paid them to produce it. Many programmers work on the same
scheme.

	- Howto book (cookbooks, etc), and similar mass market people.

These people will have more problems. But currently, the cost of
copying a book is more than the cost of the paperback. People trying
to sell overpriced hard & tradebacks would probably loose sales. But
that doesn't kill the works of the authers, only restricts the format
they can publish in slightly. And there'll still be a market for
hardbacks & tradebacks in the presence of paperbacks & slightly more
expensive copying. After all, there is now.

	- money market watchers

These people tend to sell to a small, select audience by subscription
(overpriced, at that). Adding a license agreement to the affet that
you recieve the newsletter under the condition that you not give it to
anyone else is a minor matter.

Basically, the only thing lack of a copyright law kills is things
produced explicitly in hopes of making money by selling lots of copies
of something. My reasons for claiming why a minority of software
written fills that bill have already been posted. I believe the same
about everything else, with the possible exception of mass-market
books. And loss of coypright laws won't hurt mass-market paperbacks
worth noticing.

On the other hand, copyright laws tend to restrict the free flow of
information. This causes duplicated work, lost work, and numerous
other things generally considered bad for society.

	<mike
--
He was your reason for living				Mike Meyer
So you once said					mwm@berkeley.edu
Now your reason for living				ucbvax!mwm
Has left you half dead					mwm@ucbjade.BITNET