On 26/11/2007, Tom Loosemore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > This could be said about the decisions of any public body. > > your point being? (The BBC is not 'any public body' - it is unique in > being funded by a hypothecated regressive tax. )
My point being your point is irrelevant. > In the case of Cathy Come Home (the test I set for your hypothesis) It's not mine and it's not a hypothesis. > you don't get to have the programme at all without societal coercian. Societal coercian? You mean fiscal coercian? In either case, I fail to see how this is related to how much value it presents to the society when they are free to (re)use. > Which - in the case of Cathy Come Home - renders talk of 'society > being free to use the results of creativity' moot. No, it doesn't. Just because something exists because of X or is only possible because of Y does not mean that society wouldn't benefit through it's availability for (re)use. You're arguments are a total non sequitur. > But where creativity still requires capital - or has done in the past > - then the freedoms which should be granted on use / re-use are less > obvious. After all, it's someone's capital (or licence fee) at stake, I disagree entirely with your hypothetical link between cost of creative production and the freedoms that should be awarded to society. Copyright and trademark law were specifically designed to give away a little bit of societal freedom in exchange for stimulated creativity. At no point is "cost of creative production" mentioned nor should it enter the discussion. > and human nature has been finely tuned to reject freeloaders. This is a broad generalisation that has nothing to do with the discussion. The job of our government is to protect the the public, not the private entities that expend "creative effort". It is not the public who are "freeloaders" when they ask for freedom to use, reuse and modify - it is the "creatives" who are asking/expecting too much from society. > It's my abtuse way of rejecting glib rhetoric. It's not rhetorical and it's not glib, see the full text here: http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html -- Noah Slater <http://www.bytesexual.org/> "Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the results." - R. Stallman - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
