Sonny! Uncle Hasler has spoken! John Hasler wrote: > > rjack writes: > > By the way, your "four freedoms" are really "restrictions" cloaked in > > socialist semantics. > > They are not restrictions at all. What is a restriction is copyright: it > is the government telling you what you may and may not do with your own > property. Why is that not "socialist"?
Copyright laws *establish* property rights. Licensing of that property fall into laws of contract. To quote Nimmer: "More generally, the essence of any property right is that the owner can transfer or withhold transfer of its property. Transfers, to be effective, implicate contract law as the basis for defining the value received and the interests conveyed. " "Copyright and patent laws give authors a right to charge more [than zero], so that they can recover their fixed costs (and thus promote innovation)" observed prolific and learned Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook. The GPL seeks to eliminate that right "to charge more [than zero]" and is nothing but socialist price control. Note that price control was among the first measures implemented in all of the socialist countries after the communist takeover. Shortages appeared quickly, as prices no longer reflected the true cost of production. regards, alexander. -- http://gng.z505.com/index.htm (GNG is a derecursive recursive derecursion which pwns GNU since it can be infinitely looped as GNGNGNGNG...NGNGNG... and can be said backwards too, whereas GNU cannot.) _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
