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Election 2006 (and beyond): Digital Copyright Canada
From: Russell McOrmond <russell_-at-_flora.ca>
To: abolish-ip_-at-_Contre.COM
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:14:06 -0400 (EDT)
This message is blind Carbon-copied to other friends, and a public carbon-copy to http://www.flora.org/flora/server/comnet-www/ To subscribe to this new list, please send an email to abolish-ip-subscribe@Contre.COM On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Wolfgang Sourdeau wrote: > I am waiting for at least one person from the FreeS/WAN project to subscribe > before starting the main discussions. Did you send them updated subscribe instructions? The one you sent me initially had the wrong list name attached and thus didn't work. I'm not part of the FreeS/WAN project myself, but hang around with a few of the folks in Ottawa who are (I am friends with Richard Briggs and Mike Richardson). I also tend to agree with much (but not all ;-) of what Hugh has to say about the USSA and other such political issues. I am wondering if this list is publicly archived? I tried to go to the page that was referenced in the (broken HTML) welcome message, but the link didn't work. Sometimes it is interesting to be able to reference 'gems' from conversations like this one, like I do in my signature file. If this isn't archived, I'll be sure to carbon-copy a list that is archived on things which I believe should get a wider audience. Once more people get here I will want to discuss the name of this list, which makes for an interesting first topic ;-) I was previously a person to often say "abolish", but that was more to try to form an extreme position so that the compromise would be more appropriate reform. Is this what is intended here? My introduction: ---------------- My feelings on "Intellectual Property" stem from two basic thoughts, which relate to the two components of the politically loaded phrase itself: <http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#IntellectualProperty> a) "Intellectual" works simply do not have the same properties as "physical" works do. When I hear/see/think-of/etc an idea, it is automatically "biologically copied" into my brain. Governments can attempt to restrict my ability to communicate or otherwise make use of this personal knowledge that I now have within *ME*, but it is totally unlike a physical object (that occupies 4-D time and space elsewhere, required resources to create, etc). I may come up with an idea on my own that just 'happened' to have been thought of (and filed for patent) by someone before me : patent/copyright/tracemark/etc doesn't handle this very common issue, and is a very serious issue that needs to be handled. This question of the uniqueness of the idea is becoming even more of a problem as the USSA/WIPO want to export their outdated system to the world, trying to believe that ideas-uniqueness can work with over 6Billion (and growing) people, and take care of indigineous knowledge that the USSA doesn't want to recognize as prior-art (Maybe because it's not in English?). This is especially bad with things like business-practice and software patents which are often fairly obvious ideas (IE: any qualified person given the problem could come up with an identical or similar solution). If legitimate testing criteria were used as in the origins of the patent system, and disputes were not left up to the courts (where those with the most expensive lawyers win), I suspect that extremely few of these patents would be considered valid (possibly even the whole concept of software and business patents would be deemed invalid). Physical objects that occupy the same 4-d time/space don't just 'magically appear' (in some mythical 5-d space), so again the comparison between intellectual and physical objects simply doesn't make sense. These restrictions need to be balanced against the basic human rights problem that in order to restrict information flow you often need to restrict what I can do with information already contained in my own brain. Again, these issues don't apply to 'physical objects' where it is arbitration between unique 4-d physical object, not automatically-replicated intelligence. b) I do not agree with the general concept of "rights without responsibilities" which seems to be the basis of "ownership/property". I believe in something much more akin to stewardship, and fundamentally disagree with the concept of "property" whether it be of Land, Animals, People or Ideas. I also believe they get "worse" in that order (IE: that owning animals is not as bad as human slavery, but that the current expansion of claimed ideas-ownership is worse than slavery - at least a slave can learn they are a slave ahead of time and can fight for freedom). For intellectual stewardship we can get more fine-tuned with temporary monopolies on ideas, very directly tieing the length of the temporary-monopoly with the nature of the information (development cost to organization requesting monopoly, uniqueness, etc). We would always refer to first principles understanding that the only justification for these government granted monopolies is the encouragement of ideas development, and when this encouragement becomes less obvious (as is already the case for non-custom infrastructure software such as Operating Systems, Office Suites, etc) that the monopoly is simply not granted by government. --- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> RMS clarifies Freedom http://www.gnu.org/press/2001-05-04-GPL.html Free Sklyarov http://www.dibona.com/dmca/ http://www.freesklyarov.org/ http://www.flora.org/flora/server/comnet-www/1792 Oppose DMCA in Canada!
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