Hi Michael, On Mon, 2005-10-17 at 20:24, Michael Maranda wrote:
> Copyright Awareness ought to promote an understanding of the value and > limits regarding protection and ownership with regard intellectual property. > A "happy mÃddle ground" would give proper weight to the notion of a limited > time frame, and fair-use, as well as the right to license intellectual > property under other terms (GPL, CopyLeft)... As we know, copyright in the > US was originally intended for a shorter time-frame than the current law > permits, after which intellectual property might enter public domain. The GPL (copyleft), Creative Commons and other licenses are not opposed to traditional "copyright" - in fact they depend on it! There would be no way to force people to release their derivative versions of works, nor to prevent someone from restricting access to a work, if it were not for the power of copyright law. Take away copyright, and the GPL becomes powerless and useless. See [http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html]: > The simplest way to make a program free software is to put it in the > public domain, uncopyrighted. This allows people to share the program > and their improvements, if they are so minded. But it also allows > uncooperative people to convert the program into proprietary software. [...] > Proprietary software developers use copyright to take away the users' > freedom; we use copyright to guarantee their freedom. That's why we > reverse the name, changing ``copyright'' into ``copyleft.'' True proponents of openness (especially the "forced" openness of the GPL) cannot and must not argue that copyright power itself should be reduced - only that users of the law should choose a better (more open) copyright license for their own work, and that they benefit from doing so. It's ironic that many "proponents" of openness and freedom actually advocate the exact opposite - the destruction of the forced openness and freedom guaranteed by the GPL in combination with copyright. Cheers, Chris. -- (aidworld) chris wilson | chief engineer ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
