[Mandrakeot] ESR gives up on Fedora

[Lyvim Xaphir]

On Fri, 2007-02-23 at 08:58 +0100, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 22, 2007 at 07:03:34PM -0500, Lyvim Xaphir wrote:
> > 
> >   There needs to be a balance between the right of individuals to own
> > their own property (specifically in our realm of discussion,
> > intellectual property) and the right of individuals to control the
> > source to the operating system they run.  Currently the trend with the
> > Cox's of the world is to abolish the rights of companies and individuals
> > to protect their own intellectual property rights; at any cost. The
> > plain simple definition of socialism is the abolition of personal
> > property to another jurisdiction other than the true owner of that
> > personal property; be that a dictator or a government, or a group of
> > socio-fascist developers. In this case, the developers seek to take the
> > decision about intellectual property rights OUT of the public domain
> > (the "Market") and to FORCIBLY TAKE AWAY the right of the company or
> > individual to license driver-code the way the code authors see fit.
> > This is not "freedom", it is in reality a form of slavery.
> 
> Intellectual properties (be it art, code, knowledge) are not like other 
> properties/goods. They are "non rival goods"; it means that a
> representation, an idea, a piece of code can be reused at infinity by
> the same or another person without being consumed. To maximize the
> utility the non rival goods should be freely available once produced.

NOT if the intellectual property was produced by work that was not
freely given.  If the programmer creates original product (IP) thru
his/her own effort and work, then that person has the right to the
fruits of that labor.  This is basic and not hard to understand.
Intellectual property can be re-categorized and pidgeonholed at your
leisure, but the real right and wrong truth still and always will exist;
namely that the person or company that worked for and invested in the
R&D deserves the benefits.  When those benefits are taken away forcibly,
it is still theft, and today's laws recognize that fact for the most
part.

You cannot divorce the idea from the credit deserved by the person who
originated the idea, no matter how much sophistry is applied.  If the
ideas are freely given away, that's another case entirely, but that's
not what I'm talking about here.  I'm talking about forced licensing by
monopolistic power outside the market.


 
> So it is logical to have some regulation on the property rights of this 
> kind of goods.

Which I agree with in principle, with that statement taken by itself;
but you are discussing a different type of regulation.  The situation
I'm concerned with is when the programmer wishes to profit from his
work; which is a form of regulation, but again I don't think that's what
you mean here.

My point is that if the person originates the work, then they
automatically have the rights to that work, and as such they also have
the intrinsic right to license it any way they like.  It's their work.
It's their right. This right is forcibly taken from them in the case of
forced licensing, which is presently occurring within the context of a
false-freedom ideology.


>  If those goods are available freely then individuals
> don't have a financiary incentive to produce them, therefore some
> may be protected by some rights (patents). Also one may consider that
> the producer right to define the rights on his production is above 
> considerations of welfare maximization, that's the case with
> artistic productions, at least to a temporal extent (before they go in 
> the public domain).
> 
> Currently ideas cannot be protected, 


This is your view and in my view it's false.  There are consequences
today for stealing intellectual property and many people have felt the
legal brunt of those consequences.  I don't agree with things like the
DMCA, I think that the old copyright laws were perfectly OK before
liberal lobbyists got the law situation bastardized.  But at the same
time I'm not going to sit back and watch an ivory tower circle jerk sell
doe-eyed idealists a "freedom" package that's designed to steal their
freedom.

The authors should decide what to do with their own work.  NOT ANYBODY
ELSE.




LX
-- 

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A Kernel Of Socialism

greatunwashed: module license 'great_unwashed' taints kernel.
ich: no version for "unwashed_register_device" found: kernel tainted.
Symbol usb_register_driver is being used by a non-GPL module,
which will not be allowed in the future
Please see the file Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt
in the kernel source tree for more details.
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