I do not believe I enter this pointless thread. Oh well. On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 11:11:01PM +0300, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote: > On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 09:32:03PM +0300, Tzafrir Cohen wrote: > > > > You seems to have missed Shlomi's valid point here: > > > > Infriging copyrights is not exactly stealing, because the copyrights > > holder is still left with the "goods". It may be illegal, immoral and/or > > publically non-hygienic, but it is still not stealing just as much that > > rape is not murder. > > It's taking of something that you don't have permission to. If that is > not stealing, what is?
It's not taking, it's copying. If you have an apple and I take it, you do not have it anymore. But if you have a CD and I copy it, you still have it. I did not take it. There is no need to start a new discussion about the definition of "taking" - if you do not agree that it's not stealing, you'd also claim it _is_ taking. > > > > The term "intelectual property" is intended to bind together a set of > > quite unrelated legal terms and make them appear similar. Patents are > > originally intended to promote the generation of knowledge by revealing > > new technologies (not making them trade secrets). Can you use a patent > > description today to actually replicate the invention? Does a typical > > patent has any use after its "protection" period has passed? > > Yes. It documents an invention. Once the period of the patent has passed, > the invention passes into the PUBLIC DOMAIN. At that time you are free > to copy it, manufacture it, sell it, whatever you want. And if someone > sues you for doing it you can show the judge the patent and that > ends their case. Tzafrir's question wasn't about the law, it was practical. Many patents today are too vague and general to be of any use. I do not have good concrete examples, sorry. > > > > Copyrights had a similar goal, but that goal has long been eroded. And > > worse, they originalll only applied to distribution, but now they seem > > to also apply to the use (with the lousy but legal excuse that every > > practical usage with a computer involves copying). > > It's not a lousy excuse. It boils down to the fact that you are buying > a LICENSE to use the software, not the software. It's a two edged sword, It wasn't the point. It was about whether you can simply use it. E.g. there are attempts to create time (or similarly) limited ebooks and movies. Do you seriously agree that this was the original intent? Or that it should be "like a book" (that is, once you are legally an owner, you can read it as many times and for as long as you want)? > you can sue someone for stealing music or software and you can sue > someone for violating the GPL. > > Note that without copyright laws the GPL would not exist. It would be > a request, but your claim would have no teeth. GPL violations are > copyright violation suits. That's clear. I do not know what RMS's opinions about the GPL are, but I am pretty sure many FOSS developers using GPL would rather there was no Copyright law and no GPL rather than both. For a specific example, look at the bugroff license. -- Didi ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
