[CLUE-Talk] Legal breaking of the MS monopoly WAS: Re: [CLUE-Tech] HP laptop

[Timothy C. Klein]

* Matthew Porter (mfporter at c-creature.com) wrote:
> 
> Why?  Because Microsoft does not operate in a free market.  Nor does any
> corporation.  And that goes double for a corporation that relies upon
> intellectual property laws.
> 
One thing that really bothers my about software copyright is this.  The
original intent of copyright was to give the author of a work a
financial incentive, and state-sanctioned monoply, to produce copies of
his or her work.  In exchange for this privelage, all ideas contained in
teh work are now in the publice domain.  Only verbatim copies are
protected.  Thus, Tolkien, for example, owns the right to reproduce his
works, but he does not own the ideas of elves, dwarves, and hobbits.  I
could even completely retell the exact same story, in my own words, and
be legal.  This is even more important for a scientific publication.

Now we have copyright as applied to software.  The traditional, closed,
proprietary software model publishes the binary, machine-readable code.
The actual text used to produce this code is hidden.  In essence, the
software vendor is copyrighting a *service*.  The original source code,
the stuff that contains the vital *ideas* behind the software, is a
closely guarded secret.  To me, this is a perversion of copyright.  The
software vendor gets the goverment sanctioned monopoly, but the public
does not get the ideas contained therein.  The public is getting
short-changed.  Copyright law has shifted so far in favor of the
copyright holder, it is frightening to me.

Add ridiculous patents to the mix, and the future starts to look bleak.
While big government can be very bad, and we must make sure our
government does not cause us harm, I feel that we don't have as much to
fear from that camp as we do from the mega-corporation.  Our government
is held accountable (at least in theory) by a bill of right, a
constitution, etc.  Business rarely have such a framework to keep them
honest.  If our civil rights are taken from us in the years to come, I
expect it will be mega-corporations that push this, not our government.

Tim
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== Timothy Klein || teece at silverklein.net   ==
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