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Simply outrageous. What is next? Intellectual property on arithmetic?
by jostmey 13y ago
Simply outrageous. What is next? Intellectual property on arithmetic?
- segmondy 13y agoYup, I wish I could find my essay, but I wrote an essay in the 90's on this. That one day, numbers and arithmetic will be outlawed, because any data (program, image, movies, etc) can be presented by a number, and those numbers can be represented by a bunch of mathematical operations. So if we can copyright programs, then those numbers and any possible arithmetic operation to generate them will also by be copyright able and anyone possessing them without permission is breaking the law. This also applys to all possible forms of IP.
- schoen 13y agoEben Moglen talked about the different legal regimes that were applied to different classes of information (which programmers might view as different numbers) in "Anarchism Triumphant", at http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/anarchism.pdf http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/anarchism.pdf I think it's an interesting read in conjunction with "What Colour Are Your Bits" (suggested above).