Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!sun!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Re^2: New Communicational Morality
Keywords: software, copyright, society
Message-ID: <985@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 12 Apr 89 08:39:48 GMT
References: <754@infovax.lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de> <3687@ficc.uu.net> <784@infovax.lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de>
Reply-To: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 34

In article <784@infovax.lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de> foessmei@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de (Reinhard Foessmeier) writes:
>Of course there *is* a difference between intellectual and material
>property -- if I steal the first one, you still have got it,
>if I steal the other, you don't.  That is, information can be *copied*,
>while matter cannot.

This is a fairly common line of argument, and while I've always felt
uneasy about it, I only just saw the fallacy.  The fallacy is the
unstated assumption that the only value in having a piece of
"intellectual property" resides in HAVING it.  But that's clearly
wrong.  In order to run Scribe, for example, I need to have a copy
of Scribe, and I need to have a licence for Scribe.  The value _to_me_
of Scribe is being able to use it.  But for all I know to the contrary,
Unlogic may use Troff or LaTex internally.  The value of Scribe _to_them_
lies in having control of copying.  As soon as someone makes a copy of
the Scribe sources and starts making new executables and giving them
away, they no longer have that control.  That is, the person who steals
that copy HAS permanently deprived them of the real source of value.

To make this as clear as I can, we have a product which runs on /370s.
We have not got a /370.  The value _to_us_ of a copy of our program which
would run on a /370 is thus rather small.  What _is_ of value to us is
the fact that we can make and sell such copies at will, and nobody else
can.  If somebody made an unauthorised copy of our source code, we would
have lost that completely, and in the absence of enforced copyright laws
our only hope would be customer loyalty.  (To avoid misunderstanding,
we do test the /370 product.  We just have no _other_ use for /370 cycles,
and thus no /370 of our own.  That's no criticism of /370s.)

Even with material property, the value isn't always in _having_ the
thing but is sometimes in _controlling_ it.  Some conservation societies,
for example, buy land which would otherwise have been put to unwise use.
The value to them of their ownership is not in being able to do things
with the land, but in being able to _prevent_ certain things being done.