Tom wrote: > Many of us are far more familiar with copyleft agreements that aim to > help people share and spread ideas and knowledge rather than to try to > contain and cage it to prevent people from learning things.
That is a most ill-considered and sweeping statement. Copyright exists primarily to protect the livelihood of creators and to prevent their work being stolen. It has been used also to enrich publishing and recording companies, but it remains the only way in which musicians, writers and artists can get paid for their work. Writers (for example) who retain the copyright in their work are not seeking to “prevent people from learning things” but to earn a livelihood. There is a need for a debate (not here!) about the different rights of creators and distributors, but sweeping facile statements don’t help. -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
