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I would agree that a good idea has more value across the society if it's shared. So that's one part of the equation. What about the other parts? Why would yo

by crusso 15y ago

I would agree that a good idea has more value across the society if it's shared. So that's one part of the equation. What about the other parts? Why would you want to kill the incentive for working on good ideas by preventing their creators from having control over them for a time after they create them? The capitalist system has shown over and over that financial incentives drive progress more quickly and more surely than any other system ever devised by any society on earth. Content creation isn't magically different. Further, why would you so callously wrest away control of someone's labor? That person who created that thing has a meritorious right to benefit from that labor. To ignore that person's right to the benefits of his labor is to enslave him in a society of forced egalitarianism. It's basically, morally wrong, and it always seems to go hand-in-hand with ruthlessly authoritarian communist regimes... and there are reasons for that.

prodigal_erik 15y ago
Ideas are inert. What is called "control over ideas and labor" is really control over other people who wish to use and build on them, and that is at best a necessary evil we should minimize.
wtallis 15y ago
I'm not advocating the complete repeal of copyright and patent law. I actually think that the constitutional provision for such laws is exactly right. What I'm trying to point out is that copyright and patent rights are not the natural order of things, and that without specific enactment, it is not the default state of the law, and that exclusive control over ideas is not something that authors and inventors should take for granted. Any useful copyright system must be a balance of competing interests, and it is not in any way tyrannical to suggest that the authors should not win by default and then go on to use public resources to enforce their own rules for how their ideas can be applied or disseminated. Imagine a world in which Harlan Ellison wins every lawsuit he files. That would be horrible.

by crusso 15y ago

prodigal_erik 15y ago

Ideas are inert. What is called "control over ideas and labor" is really control over other people who wish to use and build on them, and that is at best a necessary evil we should minimize.

wtallis 15y ago

I'm not advocating the complete repeal of copyright and patent law. I actually think that the constitutional provision for such laws is exactly right. What I'm trying to point out is that copyright and patent rights are not the natural order of things, and that without specific enactment, it is not the default state of the law, and that exclusive control over ideas is not something that authors and inventors should take for granted. Any useful copyright system must be a balance of competing interests, and it is not in any way tyrannical to suggest that the authors should not win by default and then go on to use public resources to enforce their own rules for how their ideas can be applied or disseminated. Imagine a world in which Harlan Ellison wins every lawsuit he files. That would be horrible.