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The last thing we need is more precedent for government agents entitling themselves to people's private property. You might as well be demanding that every prog

The last thing we need is more precedent for government agents entitling themselves to people's private property. You might as well be demanding that every programmer give the government a copy of their source code, in case you die or your company goes bankrupt and people get curious about what you were working on.

return0 10y ago
But what if the ancient romans had GNUed code, and you discovered it 1000 years later, and kept it to yourself? Governments already demand that you give up your intellectual property after a number of years, yet the same concept hasn't been applied to physical property yet.
- MichaelBurge 10y ago
  That's a really good question. I guess code specifically wouldn't be copyrighted after that time and wouldn't have any value in its physical format. I'm also not sure how hard it is to track property ownership over 1000 years, or if it applies between governments. Ancient artifacts whose ownership is in question could be legislated to not transfer ownership to the discoverer; that's not really burdensome. There's also laws regarding abandoned property. If e.g. Stallman was buried with printouts of emacs and a tomb robber steals the copy, the entire chain of transactions is tainted from that point on. But as painful as it would be to lose it, if you had verifiable proof that the documents the code is printed on were legally yours, you shouldn't be obligated by outside parties to handle them in any particular way.
MereInterest 10y ago
> You might as well be demanding that every programmer give the government a copy of their source code, in case you die or your company goes bankrupt and people get curious about what you were working on. You give that example of hyperbole, but I believe that is quite reasonable. I am of the opinion that if you want your code to have copyright protection, you must have a copy of the source code either available to the public or placed in an escrow service to be made public when the copyright expires. Copyright is an agreement between authors and society. In exchange for limited protection of the work, the work is not hidden from the public, and can therefore be built upon once the work is in public domain. If the author is not allowing the work to eventually enter the public domain, then the author's side of the agreement is not being upheld, and they should not have copyright protection either.
- MichaelBurge 10y ago
  Copyright is a different matter. These historical artifacts won't have any copyright on them in the first place, and are physically secured to prevent people from seeing them. If somebody snuck in and took pictures, there'd be no reason for the owner to have any control over the resulting pictures(although the trespasser could be prosecuted). With code, "[..]sold, insured or stored[...]" are the three verbs under consideration. Selling and insuring likely require somebody to look at it, so copyright is somewhat relevant(although you can make them sign an NDA). But that "stored" verb would mean that writing code for your personal or company use with no intention to ever show it to the public is also illegal. So you wouldn't just waive some benefits, but would be fined or jailed if you don't file a copy with the government.

return0 10y ago

But what if the ancient romans had GNUed code, and you discovered it 1000 years later, and kept it to yourself? Governments already demand that you give up your intellectual property after a number of years, yet the same concept hasn't been applied to physical property yet.

MichaelBurge 10y ago
That's a really good question. I guess code specifically wouldn't be copyrighted after that time and wouldn't have any value in its physical format. I'm also not sure how hard it is to track property ownership over 1000 years, or if it applies between governments. Ancient artifacts whose ownership is in question could be legislated to not transfer ownership to the discoverer; that's not really burdensome. There's also laws regarding abandoned property. If e.g. Stallman was buried with printouts of emacs and a tomb robber steals the copy, the entire chain of transactions is tainted from that point on. But as painful as it would be to lose it, if you had verifiable proof that the documents the code is printed on were legally yours, you shouldn't be obligated by outside parties to handle them in any particular way.

MereInterest 10y ago

> You might as well be demanding that every programmer give the government a copy of their source code, in case you die or your company goes bankrupt and people get curious about what you were working on. You give that example of hyperbole, but I believe that is quite reasonable. I am of the opinion that if you want your code to have copyright protection, you must have a copy of the source code either available to the public or placed in an escrow service to be made public when the copyright expires. Copyright is an agreement between authors and society. In exchange for limited protection of the work, the work is not hidden from the public, and can therefore be built upon once the work is in public domain. If the author is not allowing the work to eventually enter the public domain, then the author's side of the agreement is not being upheld, and they should not have copyright protection either.

MichaelBurge 10y ago
Copyright is a different matter. These historical artifacts won't have any copyright on them in the first place, and are physically secured to prevent people from seeing them. If somebody snuck in and took pictures, there'd be no reason for the owner to have any control over the resulting pictures(although the trespasser could be prosecuted). With code, "[..]sold, insured or stored[...]" are the three verbs under consideration. Selling and insuring likely require somebody to look at it, so copyright is somewhat relevant(although you can make them sign an NDA). But that "stored" verb would mean that writing code for your personal or company use with no intention to ever show it to the public is also illegal. So you wouldn't just waive some benefits, but would be fined or jailed if you don't file a copy with the government.