On Tue, Mar 04, 2008 at 02:39:25PM -0500, Miles Fidelman wrote: > steef wrote: > >Miles Fidelman wrote: > >>steef wrote: > >>> > >>>is there somebody out there who knows the (juridical) implications > >>>of the kind of "intellectual property" when somebody is going into > >>>the bush and tries to patent - (and gets this patent indeed) - a > >>>very valuable indigenous procedée before a court in the Western > >>>world without the consent of the people who developed that procedée > >>>over centuries? Is that different, or not, from patenting a very > >>>valuable script without the consent of the programmer of this > >>>software? As far as i understand that is where MS often is after. > >>yup - they're called lawyers (or less polite terms, depending on who > >>they're working for and how honorable or dishonorable the intentions > >>of their clients) > >i understand that. maybe i did not put my question right. i should > >like a short answer that concerns the content/heart of this matter. > There is no short answer. There are those who try to patent, copyright, > or otherwise lock up the rights to things - for lots of different > reasons; there are those who try to circumvent intellectual property > restrictions; there are those who believe that such restrictions are > morally right or wrong; and there's lots of law, regulation, and > politics to go around.
Stock options don't really exist either. Many people also try to curcumevent them. Many people believe that they should never have existed for ideological reasons. They are certainly something you can buy and sell. Does this make them "intellectual property"? Copyrights, patents, trademarks, bank notes, stock options and such are tools that were invented as useful tools. Some of them are occasionally abused (think of pump&dump frauds). But they are a useful tool nevertheless. Some claim that patents (even fewer: copyrights) do more harm than good and should be removed altogether. It can certainly be claimed today that in many fieds today patents don't serve a useful purpose: they do not encourge the inventor not to hide its invention. People often also claim that copyrights are too potent and last for too long - that the public will be left with too few texts to use as a source of insprirations for the next generation of authors. But then again changing that requires changing the rules. I do not like some of the current rules, but I respect them as rules. I try to help change them, but I'm still a law-abiding citizen. And your hopes for the future still don't change the present. > > If you're looking at what to do in a specific instance - be it writing a > license, challenging a patent, being sued, fighting a suit, sharing > music (or stealing it, depending on who you're talking to) - the options > and best path (if any) are specific to the situation, the individuals > and organizations involved, and what countr(ies) the parties are in. > And the outcome will be unclear - courts and regulators are notoriously > unpredictable - though whomever has the deeper pockets has a good chance > of prevailing. Now, why would you encourge further distribution of music whose author forbids you to distribute? You're both doing something illegal, providing them free publicity and distribution channel[1] *and* most importantly you don't encourge those artists that do provide their music under a convinient license. Rings a bell? About 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade. Look this quote up. [1] You wouldn't have bought their music anyway, so your illegal copy is not a lost sale. But your extra publicity does contribute to their sales of legal copies and in shows. -- Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | best ICQ# 16849754 | | friend -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
