Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Intellectual property/copyrights
Message-ID: <1807@looking.UUCP>
Date: 2 Jul 88 04:12:41 GMT
References: <9160@cisunx.UUCP> <1801@uhccux.UUCP> <807@netxcom.UUCP> <501@novavax.UUCP> <309@proxftl.UUCP> <2096@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <1804@looking.UUCP> <19709@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Distribution: world
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 37

In article <19709@watmath.waterloo.edu> rwwetmore@math.Uwaterloo.ca (Ross Wetmore) writes:
>  I believe a recent court ruling in Canada indicates that information
>cannot be owned.

The case was quite specific.  Information can be owned, that's what
copyright is all about.  Patent law even allows things you might call ideas
to be owned.
>
>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.

I have seen this point several times and I fail to understand the sense of it.
If I state that one's own creations are the truest form of personal property,
this applies to all independent creators.  When has anything else been
implied.

If I develop an idea on my own, it is mine even if other people developed
it previously by themselves.  The moral principle is very clear.  There
is a legal problem when there is contention, and we need a system for
deciding what is original and what is appropriated, but this is a
legal/logistic problem, not a moral one.

Perhaps what people bristle against is the way that patent law and, to some
extent, broader copyright laws (such as character and look&feel copyrights)
have come to mean that whoever is first must be the only original creator.
This is a problem that should be dealt with, but it in no way invalidates
the concept of ownership of the creations of one's own mind.

It isn't even black and white today, since patents are often invalidated
when the defendant shows parallel original development.  The only thing
the patent really changes is where the burden of proof lies.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd.  --  Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473