On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 6:15 AM, Rob Myers <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 1:17 AM, Samuel Klein <[email protected]> wrote:
[...] >> To the contrary, copyleft, including FSF "freedom", requires the full >> strength of copyright-law-backed restrictions on reuse, > > Free use of software requires the neutralization of copyright on > software. But copyright law cannot be neutralized without using > copyright law. If copyright law went away tomorrow, the need for and > mechanism of copyleft would go with it. > > Copyleft is an ironization of copyright, it is a legal judo throw that > uses copyright's own strength against it. > >> for a minimum >> of life+70 years. Some copyleft supporters would use infinite-term >> copyleft if it were available. > > Crosbie Fitch always tells me off if it even looks like I am going to > treat copyleft as an end in itself, and I am worried about > OpenStreetMap trying to use "share-alike" for data, so I do recognize > that the desire to use legal hacks to protect freedom can become > counter-productive. > >> This imposing definition applied to a >> very unimposing word (and held up as the standard for free sharing of >> knowledge) is something I find rather offensive... > > If you are objecting to copyleft going too far, I agree that people > can try to take it too far. > >>> Both groups must consider copyright law as a factor in achieving their >>> desired outcome but free software does so in order to protect the >>> freedom to use software rather than to remove the freedom to read. >>> Protecting and attacking freedom are not the same thing. >> >> Free software protects the right of the author to indefinitely and >> granularly restrict future use of a work. It protects the freedom of >> the author at the expense of the freedoms of reusers. > > It protects everyone equally. > >> Designers of auto-text-to-speech restrictions protect the right of the >> author to granularly restrict future use of a work; again protecting >> this specific freedom of the author at the expense of the freedom of >> reusers. > > The "freedom" to control others is not freedom, it is control. > >> Defining the freedoms protected and those restricted in each >> situation is a good exercise; you may prefer one bundle of freedoms to >> the other, but they are similar in form. > > The fact that two opposing objectives can be realized using the same > methods does not make them similar *except* formally. > > Similarity of form is not similarity of content. > >>> Copyleft is not viral, nothing can catch a copyleft license through >>> mere proximity. >> >> Standard copyright and copyleft are both viral. > > If we must use that metaphor then copyleft is the attenuated version > of the virus required to vaccinate against copyright. > > But I'd say that "heritable" is a better description. > >> You have to work at >> it to make a license that fits within Copyright that is /not/ viral. >> We can argue about what 'proximity' means, but in our gangly, >> adolescent concept of copyright, all of the following are sufficient >> proximity to pick up such a virus, [even though for instance many do >> not involve significant creative alteration]: > > If copyright is such a problem, then it needs neutralizing as > effectively as possible. Neutralizing copyright requires use of the > law, because copyright is a legal construct. The relevant area of law > here is license law. Since it is, as you point out, difficult to make > an effective copyright license without heritability, the most > effective way of neutralizing copyright is with a heritable license. > > This is what copyleft is. I think Rob's reply is pretty well stated. One problem with copyright is that's it's automatically granted, so you have to create some construct to catch things so that they don't fall in to the default system. If they *can* fall in, how free are they? (Are you more free if there are no rules, but you can be thrown into jail by anyone who decides to put you there, or if you have to follow a few rules, but you can't be put in jail unless you break them? (5 points, all answers receive credit.)) Copyleft is an overlay onto existing law and depends on it to exist -- I would argue that copyleft licenses become meaningless when the work falls into the public domain; it's never a loss when compared with the defaults. There is *no way to win* with these hacky legal overlays if you favor maximal availability -- to create a work that has absolutely no restrictions on use and cannot be re-trapped by the default system. Copyleft is a tradeoff. I can't think of a better one. -Kat -- Your donations keep Wikipedia online: http://donate.wikimedia.org/en Wikimedia, Press: [email protected] * Personal: [email protected] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage * (G)AIM:Mindspillage mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net * email for phone _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
