John Cowan wrote: > > Lawrence E. Rosen scripsit: > > > You "own" a copy of the software under a license from the copyright and > > patent holders. > > Why the horror quotes? Ownership is not absolute _alodium_, right enough, > but subject to the copyright owner's enumerated interests, ownership > of a lawful copy looks to me much like ownership of any other chattel. > You buy a book, you get to read it, scribble on it, burn it, use it to > check erosion in a gully. Same story for free software.
There is an unavoidable difference between the material fixed-medium recording, and the ideas represented by the expression recorded there. Authors have statutory exclusive rights to expression, not real "ownership" in the sense of fundamental, natural rights. This is important when you want to get to the nitty gritty of just what copyright "ownership" boils down to. The author "owns" expression in the sense of statutorily granted exclusive rights. The buyer of the work owns the product. Nobody, or everybody, owns the ideal and/or cultural ideas that expressive works convey. The author has *exclusive rights* (copyright) to particular expressions. Seth Johnson -- [CC] Counter-copyright: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cc/cc.html I reserve no rights restricting copying, modification or distribution of this incidentally recorded communication. Original authorship should be attributed reasonably, but only so far as such an expectation might hold for usual practice in ordinary social discourse to which one holds no claim of exclusive rights. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
