Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!ncar!gatech!mcnc!decvax!decwrl!pyramid!prls!philabs!micomvax!zap!iros1!mcgill-vision!mouse
From: mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (der Mouse)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc
Subject: Re: Copyrights and wrongs...
Message-ID: <1002@mcgill-vision.UUCP>
Date: 14 Mar 88 14:08:55 GMT
References: <6999@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <102@logi-dc.UUCP>
Organization: McGill University, Montreal
Lines: 75

In article <102@logi-dc.UUCP>, joe@logi-dc.UUCP (Joe Dzikiewicz) writes:
> [stuff about "intellectual property"]
> More to the point for those of us on this net, what would programming
> become if we removed intellectual property rights?

For me, at least, it would be much more enjoyable.  I'd no longer have
to worry about "did I borrow any licensed code when writing this" when
considering posting something.

> If a programmer did not own what he produced, who would pay him to
> produce it?

Gee, I dunno, maybe someone who wants it working?  I have written
several things which I have made freely available.  McGill pays me to
write such things because they get problems solved.  The things I write
would solve these problems just as well if all notions of "intellectual
property" disappeared.

> By removing intellectual property rights, however, you remove all
> incentives to develop new products.

As someone else said, "can you imagine a world in which nobody was
motivated to develop a better tool than <name deleted>"?

The motivation for me to develop most of the software I write is not
profit.  It is simply wanting to have the thing to use.  If other
people like it too, great.

What's more, a few of us actually do appreciate software as a thing in
its own right, independent of any use it may have.  I have written some
programs simply because they looked like nice programs, regardless of
any apparent need for them.  Most of these have of course lain idle,
doing nothing.

> The hacker sitting at his home computer developing a product that
> revolutionizes the world, and doing so out of pure love of
> programming, is a myth.  And yet, without intellectual property
> rights, we would depend on that hacker to make all of the new
> developments in software.

Such hackers are not myths at all.  They are where much of the first
great push came from for the microcomputer industry.  The first version
of Emacs was written by just such a person, though on a computer at MIT
(as I understand it) rather than a home machine.  (That difference is
irrelevant, as far as I can see.)  Now?  GNU Emacs (the latest and
greatest Emacs) is the best general-purpose editor in existence.  And
it's free.  Written because someone wanted it badly enough to sit down
and do it, knowing the result would be free.

> And one other problem: if we remove any financial incentives to
> creation, we limit creation to those who do not need the financial
> incentives.

Yes, but this doesn't necessarily imply...

> I would hate to see writing, performing, and programming turned over
> to the idle rich, those who would not have to spend their time
> working to feed a family.

One, destroying the legal phantom of intellectual property does not
necessarily mean removing all financial incentives to creation.  Two,
even if it did, it does not imply that programming (and writing, and
other such endeavors) would be turned over to the idle rich.  Even now,
there are a great many hobbyists who do programming (or writing, or
whatever) as a sideline, and hold down a "normal" job to pay the rent.
Destroying intellectual property would do nothing whatever to these
people.  Three, even if this did turn the creative arts (writing,
painting, programming, etc) over to the idle rich, this might not
necessarily be bad.  (I suspect it would be, but we'd have to try it to
see.)

					der Mouse

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			arpa: mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu