On Tuesday, 28 January 2014 at 14:06:08 UTC, Chris wrote:
Legitimacy of copyright is a tough one. Software development and the internet have added a new angle to it. However, where do you draw the line? The fact that something can be easily copied / distributed (internet) does not mean that the concept of copyright is obsolete (cf. the Pirate Party).
For me it is convincing enough, despite working in industry which has traditionally relied on that (good to see it is moving from there). Concept of authorship is important, concept of copyright is fallacy.
Why should a composer, band or author not have the copyright on his/her own work and not see any money for it?
Why can't they do it without relying on copyright? ;) Software industry has moved quite a lot in direction of SaaS models, for example, when encountered similar problem. Kickstarter has shown that you can find different ways of funding creativity. It may destroy few industries in process but I have zero respect to habits or tradition.
In software it's a bit different. Where does "innovation" or "own work" start? Companies have sued each other for trivial things that anybody would come up with intuitively. However, I don't think that you can easily compare the world of software development with other areas.
You can't, of course, but other areas are not as naturaly fast-evolving as IT stuff is so it is always interesting to model former with the latter in attempt to guess any possible future impact.
See how GPL vs BSD comes to dispute over fundamental beliefs? :P
