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This month's Goanet operations sponsored by an Anonymous Donor ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> Lastly, and this is my most important point, I contend that plagiarism >> at an academic level has not stunted research and progress. True, but only because it has not been allowed to do so. It is equallly important to maintain these standards of peer review and publication in countries such as India where research is still in its nascent stages. >> Copyright law, on the other hand, is exactly that -- a deterrent to >> progress. The point is that it stunts research and >> progress because it is a deterrent to young companies, without >> financial or legal muscle, to even try. Try what? I think the technology sector which you are focussing on has more start ups than any other sector today. The progress in this sector has also out paced most other sectors. >> Similarly, if TCP/IP, arguably today's networking "wheel", was >> copyrighted you and I may not have been having this discussion via >> this medium. Why wouldn't we be? The computer you use has hundreds of patents on its components. Similarly the software you use is probably protected by copyright(mine is). Yet we are still having this discussion. TCP/IP is a protocol or standard, its very purpose was to get every network to use the same procedure to communicate. It made no sense for the US DoD to patent or copyright it at the time. It would be like trying to increase viewership of a TV programme by making it pay-per-view. One thing is certain, if not for the pioneering work in Stanford and UCL and all the academic research that has followed since, the Internet would be a far cry from what it is today. Sunith -- Sunith D Velho [EMAIL PROTECTED]