Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!grand!rwwetmore
From: rwwetmore@grand.waterloo.edu (Ross Wetmore)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Intellectual property/copyrights
Message-ID: <19709@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Date: 2 Jul 88 00:16:00 GMT
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Reply-To: rwwetmore@math.Uwaterloo.ca (Ross Wetmore)
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In article <1804@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
>The creations of your own mind are the truest form of personal property
>there is.  Just because information *could* be unowned doesn't mean that it
>would be better if it were.
>-- 
>Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd.  --  Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473

  I believe a recent court ruling in Canada indicates that information
cannot be owned. The case involved a union accused of stealing a list
of confidential information on employees which it subsequently used
in recruiting. The charges of theft were dismissed on the grounds that
information could not be stolen, though had they taken the paper it
was written on this would not have been the case. This is from memory
of the newspaper article, so if someone has more concrete information
please feel free to correct me.

  I think it is critical to make a distinction between ideas or information
and the intellectual work that goes into creating a finished product.
Copyright has always applied to 'works of art' and not raw ideas. Just
because Brad's mind creates an idea is no reason to presume that no one
else's mind is capable of creating a similar idea, and to accuse everyone
of theft because they express an idea that someone may have expressed
before is neither sensible nor practical. Ideas are and always should
be communal entities.

  However, intellectual work to assemble a collection of ideas into a
useful or artistic product needs to be rewarded. One needs a better
definition of intellectual property that clearly recognizes when a
collection of ideas is a true expression of individual work that is
no longer communal but a distinct entity that can be owned. This is
obviously very difficult, and the extreme positions of: any idea I
have is my property, or no intellectual property can be owned by any
individual are obviously both full of undesirable pitfalls.

Ross W. Wetmore                 | rwwetmore@water.NetNorth
University of Waterloo          | rwwetmore@math.Uwaterloo.ca
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