On Wed, Nov 22, 2006 at 12:23:08PM -0800, Stewart Stremler wrote: > > Buy *why*? What would Apache, OpenBSD and X.org developers lose if > > copyright > > was gone tomorrow? > > Credit.
This is a valid concern that hasn't come up yet on this thread. I have an answer to your credit concern that isn't something I just thought of 2 minutes ago.... You may not have known but this, I'm told, is a favorite tactic of big media to argue for copyright. "Oh no! Without copyright plagiarism will be rampant! No one will get credit for anything!" Here is a quote from Hilary Rosen, the (now former) head of the RIAA speaking at colleges: "Analogies are what really work best. I ask them, "What have you done last week?" They may say they wrote a paper on this or that. So I tell them, "Oh, you wrote a paper, and you got an A? Would it bother you if somebody could just take that paper and get an A too? Would that bug you?" So this sense of personal investment does ring true with people." Copyright does *not* prevent plagiarism. It prevents *copying*. Plagiarism and copying are not the same. Copying may actually *prevent* plagiarism! How you say? I've heard that now when a teacher finds a sentence in a student's paper he/she thinks is plagiarized, he/she will search for it with Google. Massive sharing/copying helps search engines like Google to reveal original authors. And, the fact is people that duplicate materials like CDs do not usually replace the artist's name with their own. Chris -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
