3 ms·

Very well said. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to respond to all of your points, all of which are reasonable. (Also, I'm pathologically lazy.) However, I

by tikhonj 14y ago

Very well said. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to respond to all of your points, all of which are reasonable. (Also, I'm pathologically lazy.) However, I would like to point you to a comment I made about the GPL[1]. Particularly, my argument is that the fact the GPL uses copyright is just an implementation detail--in a very real sense, it turns copyright on itself. The underlying premise is not that the creator should have absolute control over their work but rather that each consumer has certain rights which should not be taken away. If we think of proprietary software as x and public domain/BSD/MIT as 0 on a hypothetical "copyright control scale" then the GPL is akin to -x. [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4056864 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4056864

bmelton 14y ago
I don't dispute consumer rights, but those rights aren't obtainable without the author's permission. If nothing requires the author's permission for redistribution, then where does the line stop? Should a person's private diary just be automatically published to the world? Can someone redistribute a recording of a song I was singing in the shower? Is my time in the shower video recordable, and public domain? If I can't protect my own works, and/or keep them private, then what can I keep? Where are the boundaries? Why am I obligated to share every single thing that I come up with? For what it's worth, I generally license code MIT, and I'm a proponent for free software, but with MIT, but I'm not so naive as to believe that no secrets ever need be kept, and even being a proponent of free software, should not be obligated to open source every thing that I ever do. If only for the sake of my grandmother's chocolate chip cookie recipe, I have to believe that people have some ownership over their creations.
- njs12345 14y ago
  The private diary issue is different - it's wrong to read someone's diary without their permission even if you don't disseminate the information. Same with trade secrets, there are separate protections for those.
  - bmelton 14y ago
    But why is it wrong? If it's right for me to take someone's work and distribute it against their wishes, why is the diary different? Why would I respect the protections of privacy or trade secret if I don't respect the rights of authorship? I'm not trying to set up a non-sequitur, I'm genuinely trying to understand. Also, while I understand that trade secrets are a different issue with copyright, the only tangible differences are that they are 1) secret, 2) have a bunch of requirements to protect and 3) generally lose trade secret status when 1 is no longer true. My diary is not protected by trade secret status.
    - njs12345 14y ago
      It's wrong because it's trespassing or theft. It directly causes harm to someone to disseminate their private thoughts, whereas a literary or artistic work is intended to be distributed. Trade secrets are really more about contract protection than any right of authorship - the third difference is the key one. Once a trade secret is out in the open it's no longer wrong to spread it further.
      - bmelton 14y ago
        So, in a nutshell, if I intend to keep it private, I can keep it private forever, and anybody who treads on that is "wrong" to do so. But if I release something to the public, or some secret is bared to the public against my wishes, it is gone forever, and now belongs to the world at large. And there's really no middle ground? There's no "I want to share this to you, but you can't have it," ??? If we can protect trade secrets though, then I should be able to come up with a song, and play it for a friend, but tell them to keep it secret. Make them sign an NDA even (that's how trade secrets are enforced after all). And THEN I can keep it, right? So what's the difference between that and releasing a record, on the condition that you keep it secret? Why can't I do that? Like I said, for me, the anti-copyright notion is too far a stretch. I get that copyright is perhaps broken, and it's certainly been skewed from its original intent, but I don't believe that getting rid of it altogether is the fix for that. I wouldn't support banning all airplane travel because a few have crashed, and I think that's what the anti-copyright extreme would basically have us do.

by tikhonj 14y ago

bmelton 14y ago

I don't dispute consumer rights, but those rights aren't obtainable without the author's permission. If nothing requires the author's permission for redistribution, then where does the line stop? Should a person's private diary just be automatically published to the world? Can someone redistribute a recording of a song I was singing in the shower? Is my time in the shower video recordable, and public domain? If I can't protect my own works, and/or keep them private, then what can I keep? Where are the boundaries? Why am I obligated to share every single thing that I come up with? For what it's worth, I generally license code MIT, and I'm a proponent for free software, but with MIT, but I'm not so naive as to believe that no secrets ever need be kept, and even being a proponent of free software, should not be obligated to open source every thing that I ever do. If only for the sake of my grandmother's chocolate chip cookie recipe, I have to believe that people have some ownership over their creations.

njs12345 14y ago
The private diary issue is different - it's wrong to read someone's diary without their permission even if you don't disseminate the information. Same with trade secrets, there are separate protections for those.
- bmelton 14y ago
  But why is it wrong? If it's right for me to take someone's work and distribute it against their wishes, why is the diary different? Why would I respect the protections of privacy or trade secret if I don't respect the rights of authorship? I'm not trying to set up a non-sequitur, I'm genuinely trying to understand. Also, while I understand that trade secrets are a different issue with copyright, the only tangible differences are that they are 1) secret, 2) have a bunch of requirements to protect and 3) generally lose trade secret status when 1 is no longer true. My diary is not protected by trade secret status.
  - njs12345 14y ago
    It's wrong because it's trespassing or theft. It directly causes harm to someone to disseminate their private thoughts, whereas a literary or artistic work is intended to be distributed. Trade secrets are really more about contract protection than any right of authorship - the third difference is the key one. Once a trade secret is out in the open it's no longer wrong to spread it further.
    - bmelton 14y ago
      So, in a nutshell, if I intend to keep it private, I can keep it private forever, and anybody who treads on that is "wrong" to do so. But if I release something to the public, or some secret is bared to the public against my wishes, it is gone forever, and now belongs to the world at large. And there's really no middle ground? There's no "I want to share this to you, but you can't have it," ??? If we can protect trade secrets though, then I should be able to come up with a song, and play it for a friend, but tell them to keep it secret. Make them sign an NDA even (that's how trade secrets are enforced after all). And THEN I can keep it, right? So what's the difference between that and releasing a record, on the condition that you keep it secret? Why can't I do that? Like I said, for me, the anti-copyright notion is too far a stretch. I get that copyright is perhaps broken, and it's certainly been skewed from its original intent, but I don't believe that getting rid of it altogether is the fix for that. I wouldn't support banning all airplane travel because a few have crashed, and I think that's what the anti-copyright extreme would basically have us do.