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[Muz]

Lol, this is manipulating facts. A lot of it is misleading.

The software industry is very open with ideas. You have one game making a RTS engine.. and another game will make a RTS engine too. You have games about digging 3x3 squares in mountains, and another game will use that gameplay too. No IP in design there. There's actually a clothing design IP (at least in Australia), where you can say, claim IP over the design of the Batman suit or other notable things, but like the lady said, it's very weak.

Software is not a physical object. Clothes are. Automobiles are. Food is. You don't have to have copyright to keep them from being stolen. You can sell a burger to someone without a copyright. But you can't sell software if it's not copyrighted.

Also, copyright is not the only kind of IP. Copyright just means you can't copy it. Automobiles, the other high-tech, high-income industry, relies heavily on patents. No copyright, because there's nothing to copyright.

They're entirely different things. The issue with copyrighting software is that it's the only way where you can spend years developing it without having to give them out for free. Open source movement is nice, but it's a little communist - an ideal where people are willing to create something without a reward. Even with all the people working on Linux, it's still behind Windows technologically.

Also, the part about copyrighted stuff making more money, I hope that's a joke. Food, transportation, and clothes are things that in much higher demand than something like games. I can live happily without ever buying for a single game, but not without buying clothes. And someone forgot that the automobile industry is chucked full of patents; I wouldn't call it a low IP industry. To quote a random google search for "automobile patents", "It is estimated that over 100,000 patents created the modern automobile".

[Phmcw]

The issue with copyrighting software is that it's the only way where you can spend years developing it without having to give them out for free. Open source movement is nice, but it's a little communist - an ideal where people are willing to create something without a reward. Even with all the people working on Linux, it's still behind Windows technologically.

Everything in this paragraph is false. Linux is at least on par with windows technically.
Open source is not communism.
A lot of GNU/Linux distro are commercial project, meant to sell user's support and other product, and are doing quite well actually.
Open souce softwares are both software developed by hobbyist and commissioned softwares.
Mozilla, for instance is a software company that mostly live of open source software.

[DrPizza]

Oh I didn't say that RMS is the most loved guys arount, and quite a few poeple that know him seems to find him unnerving to say the least. 
As I said he is old, and don't program as much as before, but he IS know as a skilled and brilliant hacker.

He might have been once. Now he's completely out of touch.

I won't bicker on the quality of his work, as it's not he point, but I still want to point out that he worked pretty hard, and that calling him a guy who never worked is lying.

No it isn't. He gets paid by a university for doing nothing.

I don't understand you here. What does that mean? That the FSF is solving or creating the problem?

I mean quite literally the FSF predates them. All those concerns you talk about came after RMS started his whole "free software" spiel. They were not motivating "free software". The motivations for free software were much more mundane. He wanted to be able to share programs that he didn't write and had put no input into. He thought it was unfair that he couldn't.

He wasn't motivated by DRM or privacy invasion or books and songs being deleted or anything like that. Those things came more than a decade after he started the FSF. You can't use those to rationalize his "free software" movement, because they are not what prompted its creation.

http://www.rue89.com/making-of/2008/07/09/images-off-de-sarkozy-france3-porte-plainte-contre-x
http://www.rue89.com/2008/07/02/images-off-de-sarkozy-france3-menace-rue89-de-proces-0

Here, French television channel TF1 using copyright laws to try to stop he leak of a "off screen" video of French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Only in French I'm afraid, couldn't find any site in English.

No, I mean, what are you talking about?  What does this have to do with anything?

Do you not understand that without copyright there is no FSF, no GPL, no "free software"? Do you not understand how without copyright, none of RMS's "freedoms" can be ensured? He is not an enemy of copyright. Copyright is the sole tool at his discretion.

Which just shows the fundamental hypocrisy of his position. Without the system that gives creators of IP works ownership rights--a concept he claims to be opposed to, in spite of his continued efforts to assert de facto ownership of "GNU/Linux" (so clearly, ownership means a lot to him personally)--he would have no way of mandating his "freedoms". It is precisely because the law provides for said ownership that he can dictate how people use the software. The ownership is absolutely a good thing.

[DrPizza]

Everything in this paragraph is false. Linux is at least on par with windows technically.

Yeah, until you want a GUI.

Open source is not communism.
A lot of GNU/Linux distro are commercial project, meant to sell user's support and other product, and are doing quite well actually.

Which ones are doing quite well?
Canonical (Ubuntu) exists only due to Shuttleworth's largesse. In 2008, he suggested he'd close it down if it didn't make money within 3-5 years, so who knows how that will turn out.
Red Hat is doing well, but offers no consumer products because the company believes it can't make any money from them. That might be OK for people running a server, but I don't believe that computers should be restricted to people running servers. Moreover, due to RH's restrictions on branding, a free distribution of RHEL actually requires quite some effort to produce (the CentOS project). RH puts up barriers to make free distribution harder.
It's hard to know how well SUSE is doing, but Novell is haemorrhaging money. So "not well enough", clearly.
Slackware?  Mandriva? God, who even cares about them. Really, which commercial Linux distros are doing quite well, and more importantly, which ones are mass market?

Open souce softwares are both software developed by hobbyist and commissioned softwares.
Mozilla, for instance is a software company that mostly live of open source software.

Mmm, and which mostly depends on kickbacks from Google. I'm not sure that that's a general-purpose business model....

[Phmcw]

 
ok Staman isn't against ownership and you understand nothing of it's position.
Copyright have a huge impact on the society and copyright on software is the same concept as copyright on anything else, including marketing method, workforce management, books, news and scientific articles.
The aim is to give power to the big company possessing the rights and nothing to the user. Not a lot for the creators either.

Stallman's concern began when this trend began and he felt it was an hindrance in its work. It since developed in a very general movement were "intellectual property" is a tool used to give some "right holders", often not the creator, all right over something and anything vaguely related. It's now also used to control the information, to fight free software and deter concurrence.

   

Everything in this paragraph is false. Linux is at least on par with windows technically.

Yeah, until you want a GUI.

In which case Debian, for instance, is way superior to windows, with both gnome, kde, or, my favorite : xface.

Which ones are doing quite well?
Canonical (Ubuntu) exists only due to Shuttleworth's largesse. In 2008, he suggested he'd close it down if it didn't make money within 3-5 years, so who knows how that will turn out.
Red Hat is doing well, but offers no consumer products because the company believes it can't make any money from them. That might be OK for people running a server, but I don't believe that computers should be restricted to people running servers. Moreover, due to RH's restrictions on branding, a free distribution of RHEL actually requires quite some effort to produce (the CentOS project). RH puts up barriers to make free distribution harder.
It's hard to know how well SUSE is doing, but Novell is haemorrhaging money. So "not well enough", clearly.
Slackware?  Mandriva? God, who even cares about them. Really, which commercial Linux distros are doing quite well, and more importantly, which ones are mass market?

Ubuntu must be stable by now, Mozilla is doing good in spite of the crisis, Novel has basically betrayed free software so no one care.
 
And of course you aren't counting the fact that Microsoft is doing everything to keep his monopolist position on the market. Even if it's illegal.

Stallman has received the following recognition for his work:

    * 1986: Honorary lifetime membership of the Chalmers University of Technology Computer Society
    * 1990: Exceptional merit award MacArthur Fellowship
    * 1990: The Association for Computing Machinery's Grace Murray Hopper Award "For pioneering work in the development of the extensible editor EMACS (Editing Macros)."[79]
    * 1996: Honorary doctorate from Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology
    * 1998: Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer award
    * 1999: Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award[80]
    * 2001: The Takeda Techno-Entrepreneurship Award for Social/Economic Well-Being (武田研究奨励賞)
    * 2001: Honorary doctorate, from the University of Glasgow
    * 2002: United States National Academy of Engineering membership
    * 2003: Honorary doctorate, from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
    * 2004: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad Nacional de Salta.[81]
    * 2004: Honorary professorship, from the Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería del Perú.
    * 2007: Honorary professorship, from the Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega.
    * 2007: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad de Los Angeles de Chimbote.
    * 2007: Honorary doctorate, from the University of Pavia[82]
    * 2009: Honorary doctorate, from Lakehead University [83][84]

Yeah, this prankster accomplished nothing.

[Blacken]

Masturbatory awards are worth something now? He's the only person with honorary doctorates I've ever heard of who actually asks people to call him "Doctor." Well, no. Stephen Colbert does too.

And you still utterly fail to realize that he has never held a job. Academia is not a job; it is a profession, but he is essentially paid to do nothing. He was a student at Harvard, then he was a researcher at the MIT AI Lab--also academia--until Symbolics hired away most of his colleagues, and then he went on to, herp derp, found the FSF.

He's never worked for a living. It's always been essentially handed to him. I mean, hell. At least lawyers do casework.

[Phmcw]

Masturbatory awards are worth something now? He's the only person with honorary doctorates I've ever heard of who actually asks people to call him "Doctor." Well, no. Stephen Colbert does too.

And you still utterly fail to realize that he has never held a job. Academia is not a job; it is a profession, but he is essentially paid to do nothing. He was a student at Harvard, then he was a researcher at the MIT AI Lab--also academia--until Symbolics hired away most of his colleagues, and then he went on to, herp derp, found the FSF.

He's never worked for a living. It's always been essentially handed to him. I mean, hell. At least lawyers do casework.

You're trolling me right? Because if you're not some kind of genius, who look down of everyone who doesn't have, like you, his degree, his doctorate, and several price somehow more important then his, then you are making a fool of yourself.

As you say that man has graduated from one of the most prestigious university, has worked for the biggest research center in the us. Has been granted several price, both for his work and for his political engagement and you look down on him?

Academia is not a job; it is a profession, but he is essentially paid to do nothing.

Yeah right. University only waste good taxpayer's money on nothing worthwhile.
Are you kidding?

[KhazâdAimênu]

I find it odd that so many people's conception of copyright here is bound up with notions of the author's moral rights. My view is, admittedly, US-centric, but all you have to do is go back to the Constitution:

The Congress shall have power...To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries

The key phrase here is To promote the progress of science, where science is understood to mean something akin to knowledge. Intellectual property was put into the fabric of the government not because it was some fundamental moral right, but because creating the legal fiction of intellectual property and providing protection for the fiction tends to lead to more and better art and science.

As others have noted in this thread, there is a fundamental difference between a piece of land or a hamburger and the text of computer code or a novel. If someone takes your hamburger, you can't eat it. If someone copies your computer code, you can still use it; all you've lost is the effective ability to sell it to that person. Your ability to sell it in the first place is premised on the other persons lack of it, and by the nature of information, that lack is enforceable in only two ways: either you never disclose the information, or you exert force to punish copying. Setting aside the option of never disclosing the work, we're left with the bare fact that the "harm" you suffer from being unable to sell your information only exists because you've assumed that you should have some right to control what other people do with your work, even though no direct harm is being done to you.

That right can come about in two ways: the state can grant it to you, or it can be some sort of "natural right". I'm not much of a believer in natural rights as they're usually framed, but I'll use that term to cover various things that even those such as myself think are, for whatever philosophical reasons, wrong even if the state passes a law allowing it. If the right is purely state-granted, it's probably for the utilitarian, "makes more art and science" reasons. While an interesting empirical question, that's not really what's at issue here. When people talk about the morality of the issue, they usually mean something like Deathworks seems to:

Hi!
...
I also disagree on the notion that moral arguments are silly. At least for me, the piracy issue is mostly an issue of lacking respect, and thus an important issue. It furthers an attitude in people that I find highly distressing and harmful for the internet communities - not because of any net profit for anyone, but because of how it may cause damage to the atmosphere.
...
Deathworks

While the point that this may be ultimately harmful to creating an atmosphere of polite and useful dialog is a good one, what's polite is not really a good basis on its own for limiting people's freedoms by the power of the state. I don't really think the government should be creating torts and crimes in order to protect the feelings of artists. It's unfortunate when, as in the examples Deathworks gave earlier, artists are discouraged from sharing their work because they don't feel as though they have control over it, or are afraid of being publicly associated with it. However, the simple fact is that they are not physically harmed when their work is copied without their permission. They may be emotionally harmed, but unless that rises to certain extreme levels of severity it's not the government's place to respond. They may be economically harmed, but that harm only comes about as a result of a government-created law. Perhaps someone out there has some better arguments on behalf of moral rights in copyright, but I really have a hard time finding them to be a credible basis for limiting the freedom of others.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Yes, I have to admit that the moral argument I proposed is more of what I see as something on a personal level as a human who is willing to sympathize with his fellow human beings. I guess I also mention it because it is my main motivation for backing copyright law - even though I dislike EA and Microsoft, I do not believe in sacrificing innocents in order to get at enemies.

However, you actually opened up a neat argumentative line on a political level.

First of all, we need to agree on what the state/government should be about. Personally, I believe that the ideal government/state to thrive for is a liberal one. Furthermore, I propose that the basic definition of liberalism goes in the direction of "my right to move my fist ends there where your nose begins" - that is, a liberal state aims to protect the freedoms of the members of the state. Of course, in protecting those freedoms, some freedoms need to be limited by the state, requiring an evaluation about which freedom takes priority (in the sample sentence above, the basic freedom from harm is placed above the freedom of bodily movement). In an extreme example, the state has to forbid your killing other people as you deprive them of their life which is a basis for any freedom.

If we can agree on that basic theory, we can then start analyzing this from a liberal perspective and try to evaluate what freedoms/rights are pitted against each other and how they compare with each other:

You yourself already allowed for the artists facing potential emotional harm, and this, I want to pick up. Is not living without fear a right that is worthy to be protected? You may argue that this is only a minor issue compared, let's say physical harm, and in general, I agree. However, note that I am not only talking about the professional game industry, but also art in general, using a very broad definition of art: And in many cases when dealing with private non-profit art, art means an expression of the artist's feelings and visions. As such, the probability of an emotional relevance of the art to the artist is higher than you may expect on average. Thus I believe that as far as probability/rareness is concerned, the emotional damage is something to be taken into account.

Therefore, I say that copyright defends people from a usually minor form of harm.

Now, what right/freedom is limited in order to protect from that harm? Frankly, I find it hard to find any meta-freedom to associate with (re)distribution. Not being able to (re)distribute is unlikely to cause you any harm, physically or mentally, so we can't invoke harm there. So, as far as I know, you are talking about the freedom to (re)distribute.

To evaluate the comparison, we need to see how the limitation of that freedom affects you so we can compare it to the harm that is to be prevented.

As far as I can tell, the limitation of that freedom is likely to cause only minor frustration at best, so I propose putting minor frustration on one side of the scales, and minor harm on the other.  And personally, I think that frustration weighs a bit lighter than harm (otherwise, major frustration (e.g. hating a person) would justify causing major harm (e.g. torturing/abusing/murdering them) which I don't think would be compatible with a liberal state). Thus, as both are minor in nature, the harm should weigh heavier than the frustration.

And I have actually not put all the weight onto the scales yet. Because, let's look at the intrinsic nature of the rights involved:

The harm aspect talks about people facing the potential of emotional harm. Thus, it is based on people having emotions, which is an inherent feature of their humanity. Or in other words, emotions are inalienable, and therefore strongly tied to the individual and thus their liberties.

The redistribution aspect talks about a creation that is not an inherent piece of the person. It is clearly an outside object, and to make matters worse, it only exists because of the artist. It is a creation, meaning that it is not there without the creator putting it into place. So, if the creator didn't create it in the first place, the prospective redistributor could not enjoy it or even face the freedom of redistribution. In other words, the creator is the one who actually creates the situation that makes that perceived freedom arise. And the creator, as we may remember, is the party who is potentially harmed by the redistribution.

So, we have an integral part of a human being compared to an external object which is actually more closely related to the potentially injured party and also the situation where a freedom is to be used to injure the very party who has created the situation that has brought forth that potential freedom to begin with. And at least in my book, this is another strong weight in favor of the artist and thus the copyright.

=========

Mind you, I am not saying that the copyright laws as they are now are perfect. But I believe that copyright is necessary and we should be very careful about fine-tuning it, lest we endanger the happiness, freedom and health of our fellow human beings.

Deathworks

[DrPizza]

ok Staman isn't against ownership and you understand nothing of it's position.

How can you even say that? He explicitly and unequivocally states that software should not have owners.

Copyright have a huge impact on the society and copyright on software is the same concept as copyright on anything else, including marketing method, workforce management, books, news and scientific articles.
The aim is to give power to the big company possessing the rights and nothing to the user. Not a lot for the creators either.

No, the aim is to give power to the person who created the works. Not a lot to the creators? Are you mad? In most cases (i.e. excluding works for hire) the creator is the ONLY PERSON to have any rights AT ALL.

RMS wants to strip the creator of any rights. He argues that the creator should not be special; that your "right" to give a program to another person is more important than the creator's "right" to exercise control over his intellectual output.

Stallman's concern began when this trend began and he felt it was an hindrance in its work. It since developed in a very general movement were "intellectual property" is a tool used to give some "right holders", often not the creator, all right over something and anything vaguely related. It's now also used to control the information, to fight free software and deter concurrence.

The rights holder is ALWAYS the creator unless it is a work for hire. RMS argues that the creator should not have any rights.

In which case Debian, for instance, is way superior to windows, with both gnome, kde, or, my favorite : xface.

No it isn't. It has no 3D acceleration worth a damn, a GUI where a crash in X kills all you running apps, etc. etc. It's terrible.

Ubuntu must be stable by now, Mozilla is doing good in spite of the crisis, Novel has basically betrayed free software so no one care.

Mozilla isn't a Linux distribution. And why "must" Ubuntu be stable by now? Just because you want it to be? We're only two years since Shuttleworth gave his "3-5 year" deadline.

You said that a lot of commercial Linux distributions are doing "quite well". I've already named one--Red Hat--that only does "quite well" because it completely avoids the end-user market. Can you name any others? You claim there to be "a lot" of commercial distros that are doing "quite well", so name them.

And of course you aren't counting the fact that Microsoft is doing everything to keep his monopolist position on the market. Even if it's illegal.

Microsoft doesn't have to do anything. The simple fact is, without copyright, there's no sustainable business model for consumer software. And unless you're saying that consumers should just go without (in which case, fuck you), that leaves a clear role for companies like Microsoft and Apple.

Yeah, this prankster accomplished nothing.

Saddam Hussein had honorary doctorates too. I don't see the significance at all.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Blacken: You can make your points without being a dick. You should try it some time.

I don't care if you like the threshhold pledge system or not. The fact is, copyright works for digital media only because enough people out there are honest, afraid of some penalty, afraid of malware in pirated media, or do not know how to acquire pirated media. We're trending toward more common piracy rather than less.

I gave one idea. You try something constructive like that, rather than just putting down everyone else and making much of your experiences and needs. Just hoping that copyright will continue to work in the future is baseless.

[Grakelin]

And you still utterly fail to realize that he has never held a job. Academia is not a job; it is a profession, but he is essentially paid to do nothing. He was a student at Harvard, then he was a researcher at the MIT AI Lab--also academia--until Symbolics hired away most of his colleagues, and then he went on to, herp derp, found the FSF.

You lost me with this. You have to be pretty stupid to declare that Galileo, Einstein, Hawking, and Newton lack(ed) jobs.

[DrPizza]

And you still utterly fail to realize that he has never held a job. Academia is not a job; it is a profession, but he is essentially paid to do nothing. He was a student at Harvard, then he was a researcher at the MIT AI Lab--also academia--until Symbolics hired away most of his colleagues, and then he went on to, herp derp, found the FSF.

You lost me with this. You have to be pretty stupid to declare that Galileo, Einstein, Hawking, and Newton lack(ed) jobs.

I don't think so. Career academics can't get fired (unless they rape the Dean or similar), don't ever have to do anything, and get paid all the while. They're not like jobs that any normal person has to work.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

The issue is that he was saying that to discredit. Grakelin gave examples of people who also were career academics (citation needed, I dunno their history) and who were nonetheless valuable. This suggests that despite Stallman being a career academic, he may be valuable. His career does not automatically place him as a worthless person, as Blacken suggested.

[Grakelin]

They're not like jobs that any normal person has to work.

You say this because you don't realize the effort it took to achieve the position in the first place, and their continuing benefits as researchers.

Hawking is almost completely paralyzed and wiggles out theorems with his index finger. His job, and the job of all academics, is to think. All the time. And they have to teach people things, too. And before they were giving denture, they had to earn at least three degrees and publish thesis after thesis. They have a job.